


I'd Find You Again

by SweetTveitoPie



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Anastasia AU, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Multi, Slow Burn, kind of, well as slow burn as it can get in 30k-40k words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-18
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-03 21:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 38,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12756405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetTveitoPie/pseuds/SweetTveitoPie
Summary: 10 years after the Valjean line ended after a fateful coup, rumours of the survival of the youngest prince are resurfacing in St. Petersburg. Éponine knows why, and she's shit out-of-luck ever since the Bolsheviks ruined the economy, so together with Grantaire, they'll find a way to find and bring the lost tsarevich to Paris. Now, if only she could keep her heart out of the way every time Alexandre looks at her, maybe she'll actually get those damn euros and not think about kissing the hell out of him.





	1. Prologue: The Last Dance of the Valjeans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first off, thank you so so so much to cara for helping provide the summary! everyone knows i'm shit at that kind of thing so
> 
> so this is basically an anastasia au based off the musical. we'll see how this goes. also, let's pretend enjolras is his first name in this one.
> 
> do pardon any grammatical/spelling errors. also, i know this is tagged with slow burn, but the whole story will only be around 20,000-40,000 words. it's a slow burn, but also not. idk. i can't put my thoughts into words right now.
> 
> also, imagine [baby tveit](https://www.instagram.com/p/BahsjBJB8BD/?hl=en&taken-by=aarontveit) as young enjolras but with like,,,,, curly blond hair lmao

“Why must you go, Grandpère?” Enjolras asked, scooting closer to his grandfather on the bed. It was his bedtime, and the young six-year-old was lamenting why his Grandpère Valjean had to move to Paris.

“I’ll see you again one day, my boy,” Valjean responded reassuringly, gesturing for the young boy to move closer. “I’ve stayed here too long. It's time I moved on.”

“Take me to Paris with you!” Enjolras cried, reaching out for his grandfather, his big blue eyes glassy with tears.

“You’ll visit me with your brothers and little sister,” Valjean told him, taking the little boy’s small hand in his. “We’ll go to the ballet and I’ll take you to see the Eiffel Tower and who knows what else!”

“Take me with you now,” Enjolras requested.

“Wherever I go, you’ll always be with me. You're my favourite.” Enjolras giggled at the confidential way his grandfather said it. “Strong and not afraid of anything.”

“Like you,” Enjolras piped up, smiling and showing a missing tooth.

“Shhhhh! It's our little secret.” Valjean brought out a small music box, handing it to Enjolras. “This is for you.”

Enjolras took it and wound it up before opening it, gazing in awe at the little figure spinning around. “It's our lullaby!” he realised out loud, laughing that innocent childlike laugh of his. Valjean nodded, smiling serenely.

“Whenever you hear it,” Valjean told him in a confidential sort of voice, “think of an old man who loves you very, very much.”

Enjolras laughed and wiped away the tears with the sleeve of his nightgown when he heard the voice of his mother.

“Have you said your prayers, Enjolras?” Tsarina Fantine asked as she entered his room, the tiny three-year-old Cosette trailing after her.

Enjolras hid the music box underneath his pillows before turning his attention to his mother, replying dutifully, “Yes, Mama.”

“It's getting late, my dear,” the Tsarina told him, bending down to pick up Cosette. “You should get some sleep.”

Just then Courfeyrac rushed in on his short legs, making his way to his younger brother and positively bursting with excitement due to it being the last ball of the winter season. “Enjolras! Let's play!”

“That's enough, Courfeyrac!” the Tsar reprimanded as he followed his second-youngest son into Enjolras’ bedroom and grabbed him by the waist. Squirming, Courfeyrac wriggled out of his father’s grip and ran out once more. “Get some rest now. It's your bedtime.”

“Well, I must be going,” Valjean said, standing up and getting ready to leave before Enjolras grabbed his sleeve. He turned back to his grandson and told him quietly, “Remember, Enjolras—Paris.”

“Don't go, Grandpère,” the little boy pleaded.

Valjean smiled down at his grandson and kissed the top of his head. “I will see you again, my boy.”

The boy struggled not to start crying as his Grandpère exited the room, and the Tsar and Tsarina came to sit on either side of their son to comfort him.

“Hush, now,” the Tsarina chided, patting her son on the back while balancing the little Cosette in her lap. “Get some rest, Enjolras.”

“Good night, Mama,” he called softly as his parents and sister left the room. “Good night, Papa. Good night, Cosette.”

Once he was left completely alone, he took out the music box and wound it up again, listening to the soft music it emitted when he opened the box.

_“On the wind, 'cross the sea, hear this song and remember…_

_“Soon you'll be home with me, once upon a December…”_

* * *

**TEN YEARS LATER**

Enjolras stood at the side of the ballroom, watching his brothers dance with various pretty girls from all across Russia and observing his sister, just two weeks shy of her fourteenth birthday, initiate conversation with the younger ones as their parents danced in the middle of the ballroom, the centre of attention as always. He would have been perfectly content to just stand there and watch his family and guests dance in the opulent, lavishly decorated ballroom before Courfeyrac ran up to him.

“Enjolras! Come dance with us!” his brother invited, a wide grin gracing his lips as he gestured towards Feuilly and Combeferre, their older brothers, who were dancing with these two beautiful girls Enjolras knew as being from Poland. “You're a prince too! You _have_ to dance! Come on!”

Before Enjolras could protest, he was being dragged to the middle of the ballroom floor and being shoved at the nearest girl who looked about his age, and soon he was all swept up in the events of the ball as he danced with the girl with ease, occasionally stealing away to laugh with his brothers as Cosette tried to get their attention, jumping up to them in her pretty dress and constantly tugging on their sleeves and asking for a dance. Enjolras couldn’t help but laugh at Cosette’s eagerness and brought her out onto the dance floor, dancing around with her until she tripped and fell over. The imperial family soon gathered to pose for a photograph, their heads held high with pride.

As the girls the princes had been dancing with joined them for another photograph, they heard the distinct sound of doors slamming shut and turned their heads towards the source of the sound. Enjolras’ eyes widened at the sight of several men with guns entering the ballroom.

The imperial family and their guests stood frozen for a few moments before they all went into a panic and tried to escape, and sounds of breaking glass, gunshots, and screams rang throughout the ballroom. Cosette let out a squeak of terror and hid behind Combeferre as he, Feuilly, and Courfeyrac exchanged panicked looks.

“Bolsheviks,” Combeferre mouthed to his brothers, frozen in fear.

Amid the panic, the imperial family managed to escape to another room of the palace and attempted to continue their escape, and Courfeyrac had his hand wrapped firmly around Enjolras’ wrist before the youngest brother remembered something.

“Wait!” Enjolras shouted, turning around to run back in the direction of the ballroom despite his mother’s screams. Ignoring the cries of his brothers and his sister’s wails, he ran back towards the ballroom, where everything was in total chaos.

Searching the enormous room desperately, he soon located his music box lying on the floor near a broken window, and he made a mad dash towards it and had just picked it up before he was knocked unconscious, screams and a strange ringing sound ringing in his ear.

A gunshot.


	2. Chapter I - Have You Heard There's a Rumour in St. Petersburg?

Éponine blended in among the crowd in the town square, listening intently to what that Bolshevik general Montparnasse had to say. It was freezing out, snow falling everywhere, springtime coming closer with each passing day, and the entire town was in a gloomy state of mind. For the last ten years, St. Petersburg was now poor ever since the murder of the imperial family, and Éponine hid her face under her cap and wrapped her trench coat tighter around herself as she listened grouchily to the young Bolshevik general speaking.

“We hear you, comrades!” His voice rang out throughout town square, and he waved his hand around to emphasise his words as Éponine looked on distastefully. “The revolution hears you! Yes, our wait is long, the journey hard! The chains of the Valjeans were heavy—three long centuries under their rule, but now we have broken them!  Together, we will forge a new Russia—a fair and compassionate Russia—that will be the envy of all the world! That is a promise we have made from fellow Russian to fellow Russian! The Tsar’s St. Petersburg is now the people's Leningrad!”

Éponine scoffed in disbelief, slipping away from the crowd and shoving her hands into her pockets as she left for the marketplace. _Leningrad?_

“They can call it whatever the hell they want,” she muttered to herself. “They can call it Leningrad, but it’ll always be Petersburg! New names won't change the fact that we all have the same empty stomachs.”

The last ten years had been merciless towards the people of Russia—the Bolsheviks promised a great new future, telling the citizens that times would be better. Éponine kicked up a few pebbles, thinking, _That's bullshit._ The “bright new future” apparently consisted of spies everywhere you went and suspicious disappearances of those who argued.

 _Hail our brave new land,_ Éponine thought sourly.

St. Petersburg was absolutely dismal, considered a city on the rise, booming and developing. It wasn't that bad, Éponine supposed—that is, if you didn't mind spies. Due to all the reports of the mysterious disappearances of people who had dared speak out against the Bolsheviks, the citizens of Russia had no choice but to go along with whatever their Communist leaders had to say.

 _Everyone is equal now!_ Éponine derisively thought, rolling her eyes. _Completely equal. Professors push the brooms in the streets, two dozen strangers are squeezed into two tiny rooms… See, this is what happens when you hold a_ _revolution._

She doesn't believe in revolution anymore.

The people of St. Petersburg always seemed to have something to gossip about, though—lately, rumours of the prince Enjolras’ survival had surfaced, whispered in alleyways and through cracks in the wall. The Tsar may not have survived the grisly murders, but one son was rumoured to still be alive, and Éponine had heard talk of how his Grandpère was willing to pay a massive amount of money to anyone who could bring the prince back. She began to think about it, wondering what she could do with the money if she managed to bring Prince Enjolras to his Grandpère.

“Éponine!” She turned around at the sound of a familiar voice and saw Grantaire approaching her, a look of distress in his green eyes. “They’ve closed another border. We should have gotten out of Russia when we still could!”

“Don't talk so loud!” Éponine hissed, grabbing Grantaire by the wrist and dragging him into the marketplace. She had met him when she was fifteen and he was eighteen, about nine years ago, and she found that he had pretended to be a young count as a teenager, hobnobbing with royals before the fall of the Russian empire.

“St. Petersburg was so good back then,” Grantaire muttered darkly, disliking this new Leningrad the Bolsheviks spoke of.

“R, I’ve been thinking of Prince Enjolras,” Éponine told her friend, pulling him close so nobody would hear.

“Yeah? You and all of Petersburg,” Grantaire told her sarcastically, earning himself a smack to the arm.

“Imagine what we could do!” Éponine exclaimed, careful to keep her voice low in case of spies. “We’ll find some guy to play the part, teach him what to say, you know? We’ll dress him all up, take him to Paris, and imagine what his Grandpère will reward us! Who else besides us could pull it off?”

Grantaire was slowly processing this plan, finding that he liked it more and more the more Éponine explained it. “You know, that's not a completely terrible idea,” he said, nodding along. “We just have to find a boy!”

Elsewhere in the city, the sound of a truck backfiring brought a fleeting nightmarish vision to a twenty-six-year-old street sweeper with golden curls and blue eyes—a vision of blood, men with guns, and the distant sound of screams. He ducked down, terrified, before Montparnasse approached him.

“It was just a truck backfiring, comrade,” he reassured the young man, picking up the broom he had dropped. “Nothing more. The days of neighbour against neighbour are over!” As he helped the young man to his feet, Montparnasse noticed how he was shaking, and he continued, “There's a tea shop just steps from here, let me—”

“Thank you,” the golden-haired man interrupted, attempting to retrieve his broom from Montparnasse’s grip.

“What's your rush?” Montparnasse questioned, intrigued by this young man who had strikingly similar eyes to those of the Valjeans.

“I can't lose this job,” the young man replied hurriedly, beginning to back away. “They're not easy to come by. But thank you.”

As the golden-haired man left, Montparnasse called after him, “I’m here every day!”

Back in the marketplace, Éponine and Grantaire were looking around the stalls at the people who claimed to have actual relics of the Valjeans, shouting out all sorts of things in a desperate attempt to earn money for themselves. “We need something of his to show the old man,” Éponine whispered to Grantaire, maintaining an iron grip on her friend’s arm as he grumbled in exasperation.

“There’s more to being Prince Enjolras than a crown,” Grantaire pointed out in irritation.

“Not much,” Éponine retorted swiftly, always seeming to have a quick, biting reply on the tip of her tongue. “Look how many people _you’ve_ fooled.” She soon stopped in her tracks upon hearing a man speaking of a music box initialed with an E.

Éponine turned to see the man with the music box, a music box befitting of a prince, and she walked up to him with Grantaire close behind her. “How much is that music box?” she asked, intrigued.

“Oh, this music box? It’s genuine Valjean!” the man replied. “I could never part with it!”

Éponine and Grantaire exchanged a look, and the latter dutifully pulled out cans of food to show the man. “Two cans of beans, comrade?” Grantaire offered, holding it out for the man to see.

The man’s eyes flitted between the music box and the cans of beans for quite some time before he declared, “Done.” Éponine triumphantly took the music box from him as Grantaire handed him the beans, and she slipped the music box into her pocket as they strolled off once again.

“Do you believe in fairytales, R?” Éponine asked as they exited the marketplace and went back out in daylight, the sun peeking out from between the grey clouds.

Grantaire snorted humourlessly. “Once upon a time, I did.”

“Well, we’ll create a fairytale the whole world will believe!” Éponine declared to the heavens, pumping a fist into the air. “It's risky, but it's not more than usual, is it? We need papers and tickets, and then we’ll try to cross the border with our prince.”

“Let's hope disaster doesn't strike,” Grantaire added. “Let's hope we won't be _shot_.”

“Don't worry about that!” Éponine brushed it off, waving her hand around. “We’ll be _rich_ , R! And more importantly, we’ll be out!”

“You’re not wrong,” Grantaire begrudgingly admitted, not wishing to stay in Russia for any longer than necessary. They needed to find a “prince” as soon as possible. “St. Petersburg will have some more to talk about if we manage to pull this off.”

The two of them laughed and strolled through the streets, hearing hushed mentions of Prince Enjolras everywhere they went. The people of St. Petersburg really seemed to believe in this rumour, assuring one another that it was absolutely true and that the prince was alive somewhere. Éponine smiled to herself as her hand slipped into her pocket, feeling for the music box.

The plan was perfect. Now all they needed to do was find their prince.


	3. Chapter II - A Boy with No Name and No Memories but These

“Grandpapa, it’s me, Enjolras!” an overeager young lad with dark eyes and dirty blond hair declared a bit too enthusiastically, leaning back and pressing a hand to his chest while exaggerating a swooning motion.

Éponine threw her head back and groaned loudly, shaking her head and yelling out, “Can you _please_ take that damn gum out of your mouth and try again?”

The young man stopped to glare at her, telling her haughtily, “It’s not gum, it’s tobacco.”

“Yeah, okay, whatever, just get rid of it,” Éponine told him impatiently, rolling her eyes.

She and Grantaire were trying to keep themselves on the down low as they held auditions for a man to pretend to be Enjolras in the theatre of the old abandoned Moika Palace. The theatre was large, dark, and dreary, with heavy curtains torn by bullets and upturned chairs and tables everywhere, some of them with broken legs. So far, all of the men who had come in to audition were absolutely horrid, and while Éponine was persistent, Grantaire was beginning to lose hope with each man that came by.

“This is the last three?” Éponine looked up at her friend, the look on her face making it clear that she was completely unimpressed, unenthusiastic about all the men that have auditioned. They seemed to have gone through every type of man—teenage boys playing make-believe, forty-year-old men with cigars in hand, young twenty-somethings just looking to make a quick buck, and God knows what else. “Grantaire, _really_?”

“What were you expecting?” Grantaire shot back defensively, scowling at Éponine. The both of them reluctantly turned their attention back to the young man Éponine was beginning to think had just wandered in by mistake and decided to go along with it. The man assumed a confident stance, his hands on his hips.

“It’s me, Grandpapa, your precious Enjolras!” He dramatically made a motion as if he was being shot, nearly swooning backwards, before he started taking steps towards Éponine as he exclaimed, “They shot me but I lived and came all the way to Paris to tell you I’m alive!” At his last few words, he knelt before Éponine with a grin on his face, and she just stared at him incredulously before dropping her head in defeat. The young man got to his feet, telling her frostily, “I’m not much of an actor.”

“No…” Grantaire feigned disbelief and rolled his eyes at the young man’s statement as Éponine stood back up, beginning to usher the taller man out.

“Thank you, lads!” She pushed the man back in the direction of all of the men who have auditioned, who had gathered in a little group by the door. They all turned at the sound of her voice, eager to hear if any of them had made the cut. She sighed loudly in exasperation and told them, “We’ll let you know.” She had just turned her back on them before one of them spoke up.

“What you’re doing is _illegal_ ,” he told her bluntly, only to be met by one of Éponine’s death glares.

“Out,” she commanded, strangely intimidating for someone as small as her.

Another man piped up, “If you weren’t such a pretty lady, Miss Éponine, I’d report you.”

“ _Out!_ ” Éponine barked again, waving her hands wildly and running at the little gaggle of men, batting them away and chasing them off through the door to get them to leave. As she chased them out, Grantaire fell back in a chair, looking through the list of men who had auditioned and sighing in defeat.

When Éponine came back fuming, brushing her hair out of her face, he told her, “Well, you tried. Enjolrases don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“I’m not giving up!” Éponine declared stubbornly, pulling her cap back on as she gave Grantaire an absolutely nasty glare, causing him to flinch. “I’ll go to Siberia to find an Enjolras!”

Grantaire raised an eyebrow at her outburst, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms across his chest as he looked at her with a quizzical look on his face. “Have you ever been to Siberia?” he questioned coolly, knowing the answer full well.

Éponine’s nasty glare only worsened as she gave him a look that could kill, muttering, “I’ve never been anywhere but here.”

Grantaire rolled his eyes, remembering when he had first met Éponine. He had been eighteen while she had been this plucky little fifteen-year-old girl, insufferable and snarky, always with a cutting retort at the tip of her tongue, and she was actually the reason he was still alive now. Growing increasingly impatient with his friend’s stubborn attitude, he remarked under his breath, “The day I made the mistake of befriending you…”

“It was either me or a Bolshevik firing squad!” Éponine reminded him hotly. It seemed she hadn’t forgotten that day either.

Grantaire sighed, turning the list over and grabbing a pencil, beginning to sketch on the blank side of the paper. “You saved my life,” he mumbled, the corner of his mouth turning up in a half-smile.

Éponine made her way back over to him again, a grin lighting up her face. “A thoughtless act of kindness,” she said, taking the seat behind him. “Completely out of character.” She took the music box out of the pocket of her coat and began to fiddle around with it, wondering if she could get it to open. In the midst of sketching, Grantaire noticed how she was beginning to become more and more careless with the music box as she grew impatient while trying to open it.

“Stop fiddling with that,” he scolded her, flicking her arm and earning himself a smack. “You’ll break it.”

“I just can’t get it to open!” Éponine gritted, turning the music box over in her hands to see if something was wrong with it.

Grantaire sighed and burst out, “It’s a fake!”

Éponine stopped fidgeting with the music box and looked up at him, scoffing. “Oh, how would you know?” she bit back in annoyance, partly annoyed with Grantaire and mostly angry at the music box for not opening despite her attempts.

“Nobody spots a fake as well as me,” Grantaire retorted, sinking back into his chair as his tone took a decidedly more defeated turn, mumbling, “Count Grantaire, biggest fake of them all.”

Éponine scrunched up her face at his statement, just about to respond to it before they heard a knock at the door. Their heads immediately turned in the direction of the door as Grantaire began to panic, jumping to conclusions as always and imagining the worst-case scenario, picturing guards standing behind those doors, ready to arrest them. “I knew it!”

“Those men ratted on us!” Éponine exclaimed furiously, jumping to her feet as Grantaire did the same.

“Well, at least they’ll feed us in jail!” He was just about to rush out of the room to escape before a golden-haired man in a tattered brown coat wandered in, seeming rather lost. Éponine stopped in her tracks, surprised at the sight of a dirty, handsome young man wandering into the old theatre.

He was tall and seemed around her age, if not a bit older—she would say by about two years, from the looks of him; he seemed closer in age to Grantaire—and he was rather dirty, with an old worn-out coat and pants with quite a few rips and tears in them, paired with a ratty pair of black work shoes. What struck Éponine most about him, however, was his face—a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever seen, cheeks rather flushed from the cold outside, a defined jawline, some stubble, and golden curls upon his head. Despite his somewhat filthy appearance, there was no denying that this man was incredibly attractive.

“I’m looking for someone named Éponine,” he stated urgently, his striking blue eyes fixating on her.

She stepped towards him, rather taken aback by just how tall he was. “I’m Éponine,” she replied cautiously, sizing him up and seeming rather suspicious of his intentions. “What do you want?”

“I need exit papers,” the blue-eyed man replied, looking down at her with an urgent look in his eyes. Éponine cursed herself for being so short as this golden-haired man towered above her, saying, “I was told you were the only person who could help me.”

“Exit papers are expensive,” Éponine replied shortly, having lost most of her patience in the midst of the failed auditions. She was just about to turn her back on him before he spoke again.

“I’ve saved a little money.” Éponine raised her eyebrows.

“The right papers cost a lot,” she informed him indifferently, walking back to sit down in her chair.

“I’m a hard worker!” he persisted, seeming to grow more desperate as he approached her and knelt down beside her. “You’ll get your money.”

Éponine went silent for a moment and just stared at him, wondering what on earth he was trying to do as she asked, “What do you do?”

“I’m a street sweeper,” the man informed her without hesitation, crossing his arms across his chest when Éponine snorted derisively.

“A street sweeper!” She stood up, yelling out, “Grantaire, get a load of this!”

“In Odessa I washed dishes!” the man added, growing more defensive as he stood up and turned around to see Grantaire coming back into the theatre. “Before that I worked at a hospital in Perm—”

“That’s a long way from here,” Éponine remarked, cutting him off.

“I know, I walked it,” he replied as if it was perfectly normal to have walked halfway across Russia. Grantaire went over to join him and Éponine, growing more and more intrigued by this odd young man by the second.

Grantaire whistled in disbelief at the man’s statement as Éponine questioned in amazement, “You walked all the way here from _Perm_?” Her big brown eyes widened at the thought of this ragged young man making his way across Russia. He did seem quite physically fit—she wouldn’t put it past him to travel halfway across Russia by foot.

“I had no choice,” the golden-haired man said, seeming to clench his teeth. Could he just get the damn papers already?

Éponine made a funny little noise, asking bluntly, “Who the hell are you running from?”

The strange man hesitated for a moment, considering his answer before he responded, “I’m not running from anyone. I think I’m running _to_. Running to someone. I don’t know who they are yet, but they’re waiting for me in Paris.”

Éponine laughed scornfully, fire in her dark eyes. “You don’t need exit papers! There’s a canal out there. All you need to do is jump in and start swimming. You’ll be in Paris in no time!” She continued to laugh as Grantaire joined in, and she exclaimed, “He’s crazy!”

“I’m not crazy!” the golden-haired man shot back defensively, glaring at her with an offended look in his blue eyes. “There’s no need to be unkind.”

“We were hoping you’d be someone else,” Grantaire informed him frankly. When the man asked who, he burst out, “Someone who, for all we know, may not even exist!”

The man bit his lip to keep himself from retorting as he turned around to survey his surroundings, surprised to find that he somehow recognised the theatre after really taking a good look at it for the first time since he entered. It seemed vaguely familiar, although he had absolutely no idea why since he had no memory of ever being here before today. Just then, he stumbled back, fleeting images of an event at this very theatre flashing through his mind. Could they possibly be lost memories? “I’ve been here before.”

Éponine and Grantaire exchanged a look as the young man continued to think out loud, sounding even more distant and far away with each word he spoke. “There was a play… Everyone was dressed to the nines.” The looks of scorn on Éponine and Grantaire’s faces were beginning to be replaced by actual concern as this man seemed to find himself in a trance.

“This was a private theatre,” Grantaire told him. The man continued to ramble on and on, his tone growing dreamier by the second, and soon enough, he soon began to look as if he was about to pass out, his blue eyes staring off into space and a dreamy ghost of a smile on his lips.

“He’s going to faint on us!” Éponine exclaimed in alarm, fearing that he might drop to the ground before her.

Grantaire rushed to grab a chair and helped the golden-haired man into it before he could collapse, asking in concern, “When did you last eat?”

“We danced afterwards.” The man was still stuck in his own little world, sounding even more distant with each word he said. “There was champagne! I stole a sip!”

“Éponine, get him some water,” Grantaire told a worried Éponine, and she promptly ran out of the room to do as she was told. “And a piece of that cheese, too!”

As Éponine exited the room, the man looked up at Grantaire with a sullen look in his eyes, telling him tonelessly, “You seem to be a gentleman. Your _friend_ doesn’t seem like much of a lady,” the golden-haired man added darkly, turning to glance over his shoulder at the door Éponine had gone out through.

Grantaire had to keep himself from laughing out loud, muttering, “Gentleman. Ha.” When the golden-haired man turned to look up at him, he said, “I haven’t heard that word in a _long_ time. Life hasn’t been easy for her, you know.”

“Life hasn’t been easy for _anybody_ ,” the golden-haired man pointed out drily as Éponine returned with the glass of water and cheese Grantaire had asked for. The man turned as Éponine begrudgingly handed him the water and cheese, and he said quietly, “Thank you.”

Grantaire pulled Éponine aside as the golden-haired man busied himself with his food and drink, whispering into her ear, “Don’t be too quick to judge this one.”

As Grantaire went to sit back down in another empty seat, Éponine’s dark eyes darted from him to the golden-haired man and back again, and she snorted. “ _Him?_ Have you gone crazy, too?”

He ignored her, turning back to the golden-haired man and introducing himself, bowing to him. “I’m Grantaire! What’s your name?”

The man was silent for several long moments before he replied, “I don’t know.”

Éponine and Grantaire stared at him with furrowed brows, both intrigued and mystified. “You don’t know?” Grantaire asked disbelievingly, chuckling.

“They gave me a name,” the man retorted, growing defensive when he saw the disbelieving look on Éponine’s face. “They gave me a name at the hospital. Alexandre. They told me I had amnesia.”

Éponine had just turned away before hearing his last sentence, and she turned back to stare at him in further disbelief as he continued, “There was nothing they could do about it.”

The man—the man they now knew as Alexandre—began to tell them of his tale, launching into a story of how he had gotten by in the last ten years. “They said they found me on the side of a road, tracks everywhere, while it was snowing. It was dark and cold, and I was just a sixteen-year-old boy with no name and no memory. When I woke up, the first thing I heard was the sound of rain against a window, and all around me were empty hospital beds. I heard nurses speaking. ‘Call the boy Alexandre,’ they said. I don’t remember anything before that.”

Éponine and Grantaire had found seats across from Alexandre, becoming even more intrigued by his strange tale. The gears in her mind were at work, and she noticed for the first time how Alexandre bore a striking resemblance to Prince Enjolras, with his bright blue eyes and halo of golden curls. _Maybe we could trick him into believing he’s Enjolras,_ she thought, already forming a plan in her head. _He looks just like him._ She and Grantaire continued to listen to him intently, fascinated by his story.

“When I left the hospital, I was travelling the back roads,” Alexandre continued, fiddling with a tattered sleeve. “I  slept in the woods, and I took whatever I needed and worked whenever I got the chance to. And I have these dreams—the dreams keep coming, and they always fade away but they come back every night. I keep dreaming of Paris. I hear a voice—it’s always the same voice—telling me to come to Paris, telling me that they’ll meet me there.” He suddenly shuddered, going on, “You have no idea what it’s like to have no idea who you are. I’ve lived in the shadows, I’ve struggled to survive, but I did, and I’ve come so far since I left that hospital! I have nightmares, too—flashes of fire and echoes of screams, but I know there’s truth in them. I’m not going to give up until I find out what those dreams mean. Even if it takes the rest of my life, I’m not giving up until everything comes back.”

With that, Alexandre let out a long-winded sigh after his explanation, and Éponine and Grantaire were absolutely amazed by this man’s determination. Éponine stood up and approached him, beginning to see him as more than just some man who had wandered into the theatre, and she told him with a smile on her face, “Maybe we can help you after all, _Alexandre_. We happen to be going to Paris ourselves!”


	4. Chapter III - If I Can Learn to Do It, You Can Learn to Do It

“The rumours really do never end…”

Montparnasse walked back into his office, closely followed by three young men claiming that a pair of con artists by the names of Éponine and Grantaire were holding auditions in search of a person to play the part of Prince Enjolras, of whom there’s been rumours of survival. Montparnasse sat down at his desk and glanced up at the three men, telling them tersely, “Anything concerning the Valjeans, even the most ridiculous rumour—” he paused and peered at them in distaste, scorn evident in his expression “—we take very seriously. What seems to be the problem, comrades?”

“He’s about as much Prince Enjolras as I am,” one of the men complained, taking a seat across from Montparnasse.

“He’s a street sweeper,” another man added bitterly. “He was living under a bridge before he took up with them!”

“His name is Alexandre,” the last man told Montparnasse, causing him to stop looking through his files and look up, giving them his full attention for the first time.

After some time, he merely said, “Thank you,” and proceeded to go back to whatever he had been doing.

The men looked between themselves as one of them spluttered, “Well, are—aren’t you going to arrest them?”

“You’ve done your duty,” Montparnasse informed them, cold and curt. “I’ve done mine—listening to your gossip.”

“It’s not _gossip_!” a man burst out. “It’s the _truth_!”

Montparnasse slammed his hand onto his desk, startling the men, and slowly, he got to his feet, walking around his desk to face the three actors. He gave them a cold, hard look that sent shivers down their spines, and he warned them harshly, “The next time I see you three… _procuring_ on that street, I won’t look the other way. Now leave.” All it took was one look, and the men were soon out of his office.

Montparnasse sighed to himself, thinking, _Yet another pretender, no longer playing pretend. More men to arrest._ He shouted out, “Fill up another report!”

He glanced out the window at the Neva River in the distance and took out his gun to fiddle with, a frown on his face, lost in his thoughts. _The rumours never end…_

* * *

“Aren’t you ready to become Prince Enjolras?” Éponine asked, rapidly losing her patience as she paced the room, Alexandre sitting before her in a chair.

“I’m ready to find out who I _am_!” he retorted indignantly, staying stubbornly seated. “I’m not going to _lie_ to do that!”

The two of them were in the dreary living room of the Moika Palace, sunlight streaming in through the smudged windows. They had begun to spend their days there, Éponine and Grantaire desperate to convince Alexandre to learn how to act like the prince so they could receive the reward for his safe return. Éponine was pacing back and forth before the fireplace, in which they had lit a small fire to keep them warm, and she was on the verge of tearing her hair out as Alexandre obstinately refused to, as Éponine put it, “become Prince Enjolras”. Good God, what was the point of taking him in if he wasn’t even going to do what they had originally taken him in to do?

“It won’t be a lie!” Éponine ran over to grab his hands, ignoring the light jolt of electricity she felt from taking his warm hands into her cold ones. As she stared at him, she began to notice all the traits he shared with Prince Enjolras. The resemblance really was uncanny.

Pulling him to his feet, she dragged him towards the centre of the living room, telling him, “We’re trying to help you remember the truth!”

Alexandre merely stared back at her, looking completely unamused. This adamant young woman just won’t stop at anything, will she? “How are you so confident?”

“If the old tsar recognises you as his grandson, then Grantaire and I will get a small reward for our efforts and then we’ll _all_ live happily ever after,” Éponine persisted, her tone taking a more scornful turn at the last few words. Happily ever after didn’t exist in her world, but with that money, she’d get pretty damn close.

“And if he calls me an impostor?” Alexandre challenged, raising an eyebrow as he stared her down, eyes filled with doubt.

Éponine fell silent—she hadn’t considered that before he made such a statement. After a few moments of consideration, she shrugged, replying coolly, “Then it’ll all just be an honest mistake. Either way, it gets you to Paris _and_ gets us out of Russia. Everybody wins!”

Alexandre hesitated and pulled away from Éponine, walking over to a window and staring out at the long-abandoned garden, needing some time to think. On one hand, he didn’t want to be dragged into a situation as potentially deceiving as this, and he absolutely didn’t want to hurt anyone in the process—he had a feeling the old tsar Éponine spoke so often about would be destroyed if he found out that Alexandre really wasn’t Enjolras. On the other hand, he didn’t know if he _wasn’t_ Prince Enjolras, having lost his memory when he was sixteen, and if what Éponine said was true, then he bore a strong resemblance to the lost prince and they could very well pull this off if Alexandre just agreed to it.

 _It gets you to Paris_ and _gets us out of Russia!_ Éponine’s voice echoed in the back of his mind. Alexandre sighed—he really did need to get to Paris. He needed to find out what was there, to find out whatever—or whoever—was waiting for him, absolutely convinced that someone was there. And Éponine’s always rattling on and on about how much he looked like Prince Enjolras, and how with proper lessons, he’d be able to act just like him. It could be worth a shot.

He turned around to find that Grantaire had entered the living room, and taking a deep breath, Alexandre asked, “How do you… _become_ the person you’ve forgotten you ever were?”

Éponine and Grantaire exchanged looks of excitement. Finally, they were getting _somewhere_! Grantaire ran over to Alexandre and ushered him back into a seat, telling him enthusiastically, “Take a deep breath, and imagine another time. Another world.”

Éponine came over to join them, her scowl slowly transforming into a wide grin as she chimed in, “For starters, you were born in a palace by the sea!”

“A palace by the sea?” Alexandre pursed his lips, trying to picture it. An image of an enormous residence of royals by the sea found its way into his mind, and he tried to wrap his mind around the thought of it.

“You rode horseback when you were only three years old,” Grantaire added, grinning at the pleasantly surprised look on Alexandre’s face.

The golden-haired man turned to look disbelievingly at Grantaire, simply unable to imagine himself riding horseback. “Really? Horseback riding? _Me?_ ”

“The horse’s name was Romeo!” Grantaire told him brightly, turning around to run off and come back shortly with an enormous book in hand. He handed it to Alexandre, who immediately began to flip through it, finding that it was a book on the Valjean family history. When he looked up again, Grantaire continued, “You threw tantrums and terrorised the cook! Oh, you nearly brought the palace down—”

“What a charming child,” Éponine commented drily, earning herself a dirty look from Alexandre.

“You’d behave whenever your mother gave you that look,” Grantaire told Alexandre, making an excessively stern face and stifling a laugh at the startled look on the young man’s face.

“Imagine how it was,” Éponine told him, sitting down beside the golden-haired man. “A long-forgotten past!”

“We have a lot to teach you!” Grantaire stated, grabbing Alexandre’s hands and pulling him to his feet, taking him to the centre of the living room. Éponine jumped up, following them with a smile on her face. “Let’s start with the walk. Like this.” Grantaire straightened his back and held his head up high, beginning to strut confidently across the room, acting all high and mighty. “Now you do it!”

Alexandre attempted to imitate Grantaire’s haughty walk, not completely failing, much to his surprise, as he mumbled, “I feel kind of ridiculous.”

Éponine clicked her tongue, cocking her head. “Not bad,” she remarked, making a genuinely nice comment about him for the first time. Alexandre turned his head towards her, a faint pink blush and a pleasantly surprised smile lighting up his face and really emphasising how handsome he was. She tried to ignore how nice he looked, telling herself to focus instead on the task at hand. _This is no time for romance, Éponine,_ she told herself firmly.

She was pulled out of her trance when Grantaire announced, “Ladies’ hands receive kisses!” and proceeded to push her in Alexandre’s direction, demonstrating. Éponine made a face at the feeling of Grantaire’s lips making contact with her knuckles and immediately wiped her hand off on her coat, giving her friend a dirty look as she held her hand out for Alexandre to kiss, turning faintly pink when he did so. “And remember! If we can learn to do it, so can you! Now, bows. Bowing and curtsying are signs of respect.”

“I curtsied to someone once,” Éponine remarked offhandedly, an image of a boy and a parade briefly flashing through her mind until it slipped out of her grasp before she could fully remember it.

“Ha! There!” Grantaire crowed, jumping at an opportunity to make fun of his friend. “Ha, I _knew_ you weren’t as tough as you act!”

“I was just a girl!” Éponine defended, turning beet red once she realised she had said that out loud. “I didn’t know any better and you _know_ it! It was the first and last time—”

As Éponine and Grantaire bickered, Alexandre went and did a perfect bow, perfecting it on the first try, and Éponine and Grantaire fell silent as they stared at him in amazement. “Where—where did you learn that?” she asked, her big brown eyes widening.

“I didn’t teach him that,” Grantaire whispered, staring in astonishment at Alexandre before bursting out laughing, delighted that they were getting somewhere. “He’s a natural!”

As they continued to coach Alexandre in the ways of royalty, months passed by, and soon spring turned into summer, which in turn soon became autumn. Alexandre was learning more and more about how to act like a prince from Éponine and Grantaire, being taught of all the ways a royal would and should act—proper etiquette, respectful gestures, even the way royals _spoke_ —and every month or so, despite his initial resistance, Éponine and Grantaire would quiz him on his knowledge.

It was an early autumn day, and a fire was blazing in the fireplace of the Moika Palace’s living room as Éponine lay draped across an armchair, the book on the imperial family wide open in her lap. Grantaire had asked Alexandre a couple of questions, and so she asked lazily, “Who was your best friend?”

“My brother Courfeyrac,” Alexandre replied without hesitation.

“Wrong!” Grantaire yelled. “Your _best_ friend is—”

“I know who my best friend is,” Alexandre insisted, getting to his feet as he glared obstinately at Éponine and Grantaire. They had had to deal with his excessive stubbornness over the months, and it really got on Éponine’s nerves more often than not. It didn’t matter how attractive he was, he shouldn’t be resisting! He wanted to get to Paris, didn’t he?

“Ooh, someone’s got a temper,” she muttered, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t like being contradicted!” Alexandre marched up to Éponine as she jumped to her feet, glaring up into his piercing blue eyes.

“That makes two of us!” Éponine shot back, glaring up at him fiercely and wishing he wasn’t so goddamn impossible.

“Continuing on…,” Grantaire said, trying to relieve the tension between Éponine and Alexandre and about to resume before the golden-haired man spoke again, unable to bear it any longer.

“I’ve had it! I hate you both!” he yelled out, pacing the room and pulling at his golden curls as he finally lost the last shred of his patience. Éponine and Grantaire had been merciless in their lessons over the months, and he had a good mind to leave right there if they continued to treat him like less than a person. “I’m starting to feel sorry we ever even met! I’m hungry, and I’m nervous, I’m _frightened_ , and I’m only human, too! Don’t forget that! I don’t remember _anything_! Get out and let me be!”

Alexandre was just about to storm out before Grantaire grabbed him by the arm, pulling him back towards the middle of the room. “We’re sorry,” he apologised quietly, only now realising how awfully he and Éponine had been treating Alexandre over the past few months. They couldn’t lose their prince, not now, not when they were so close, and he silently resolved to be better to Alexandre so he wouldn’t walk out on them. He didn’t know about Éponine, but she was absolutely desperate for that reward, so maybe she’ll begrudgingly comply and be nicer to Alexandre. “At least, I am. I don’t know about Éponine over there,” Grantaire muttered under his breath, looking over his shoulder at the small woman.

Éponine scowled at him, giving him an absolutely nasty glare as she yelled, “I heard that!”

Grantaire conveniently ignored her, saying to Alexandre, “Let’s start again, shall we?”

They quizzed him on his knowledge of the family yet again, leading him to recall a yellow cat of a count, which Éponine realised they hadn’t told him about. As she merely stared at him in amazement, Alexandre paced the room, growing more and more confident in his knowledge and reciting everything he knew with only two mistakes. The next thing she knew, Grantaire was shoving her at Alexandre, announcing, “Now you learn how to dance!”

Éponine froze in place, stiff as a board, when Alexandre placed his hand on her waist and took her hand in his other. He didn’t seem too thrilled about it either, keeping quite a distance as Grantaire began to count, forcing them both to awkwardly sway back and forth in place in something that didn’t even remotely resemble a dance. “One two three, one two three, one two—”

“Ouch!” Éponine let go of Alexandre and stumbled backwards, her foot having been stepped on by him. She glared up at him as he glared right back, fire in his blue eyes that could rival the fierceness in her brown. They merely stood there in front of each other, glaring furiously at each other, as Grantaire shouted, “Again!”

Alexandre reluctantly pulled Éponine back into that painfully awkward closed position and they began to sway back and forth once more, their bodies incredibly stiff as Grantaire counted behind them. “One two three, one two three, one two three, one—”

“Argh!” Éponine kicked Alexandre in the shin, causing the golden-haired man to cry out in pain. He hopped on one leg, wincing as he glared at the feisty young woman before him.

“Éponine!” Grantaire scolded, positioning himself behind her and imitating her motions as they taught Alexandre how to properly dance, and surprisingly enough, soon, Éponine and Alexandre began to loosen up, leading Grantaire to back away without them noticing. Éponine gazed up into Alexandre’s bright blue eyes as they grew less and less stiff, a look of pleasant surprise on her face, and soon, they were both twirling gracefully around the spacious living room, growing more enthusiastic by the moment as they danced gleefully around the room, easing into the dancing more and more with each step they took. Éponine let out a shriek of surprise when Alexandre grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up into the air without warning, and once she was back on the ground, their lively dance steadily slowed down into a gentler, graceful waltz as they gazed into each other’s eyes. Éponine found herself holding Alexandre’s gaze, and she could feel her cheeks flush pink from the way he was looking at her. He himself was blushing too as they danced around the room almost effortlessly.

Grantaire stood to the side, noticing how the hostility between them had toned down considerably. If he didn’t know any better, he might even say they seemed attracted to each other when they weren't at each other's throats, realising that Éponine had never looked at anyone the way she was looking at Alexandre now.

“See? It’s not so hard!” Grantaire wedged himself between Alexandre and Éponine, breaking the two of them apart, and he took Alexandre’s hand and began to dance with him around the room, laughing the whole way. Éponine soon wedged herself between the two significantly taller men, the three of them merrily dancing around the large living room, lifting Éponine off her feet and swinging her around as the three of them danced and evoking a delighted shriek of laughter from the young woman. Grantaire began to think that Alexandre was finally ready to pose as Prince Enjolras, and once the three of them were sitting in armchairs, exhausted from all their dancing, Grantaire told Alexandre, “Okay, now tell us everything you know.”

The golden-haired man bolted to his feet and recited everything off the top of his head without a single mistake, and Éponine’s face lit up as Grantaire called out gleefully, “We’re ready for Paris! _Très bien, monsieur, très bien_!”

Alexandre laughed and bowed, replying loftily, “ _Merci, monsieur, merci_.”

“ _Tu parles français_?” Grantaire asked as Alexandre sat back down, absolutely exhausted.

Éponine scrunched up her face in annoyance, trying to figure out what they were saying. “What are you telling him?” she questioned curiously, rather irritated at being left out.

“All the aristocrats spoke French, Éponine,” Grantaire explained to a befuddled Éponine. “Russian was for commoners like you.” He went back up to Alexandre and informed him happily, “You get to sleep on the sack of lentils tonight! You’ve earned it.”

“Oh, thank God,” Alexandre murmured, giving Grantaire a feeble smile as he slumped down in his armchair.

Grantaire made to leave the room, calling over his shoulder, “We’ll revisit everything tomorrow, one more time!”

“In _Russian_!” Éponine added heatedly, following Grantaire out of the room before stopping in the doorway to look over her shoulder at Alexandre, disregarding how her heart seemed to skip a beat. “Like the _common people_!”

Once Alexandre was left all alone, he stood up and walked over to the window, gazing out and observing how dusk was falling upon the city as he wondered what was going to happen. Éponine and Grantaire had had to learn the hard way just how stubborn he was over the past few months, and Alexandre found himself in frequent arguments with the feisty, occasionally insufferable Éponine, feeling as if her and Grantaire’s sarcastic tendencies had rubbed off on him. He tried to piece together the fragments of memories whirling through his mind, staring at the orange-streaked sky through the smudged windows.

_You were born in a palace by the sea…_


	5. Chapter IV - Welcome to my Petersburg

Montparnasse stood behind the desk in his office, gazing out the window as he held up a phone to his ear, listening to the head general speaking. Nodding along, he replied, “Thank you, sir! Your confidence in me will be justified. My whole office, with a brilliant view of the Nevsky Prospekt, a Russian telephone that works—” He laughed, only to be met by confused silence and then a stern reprimanding on the other end. His awkward laughter died down, and he verified, “That was a joke. Yes, we have excellent telephones. Oh, he’s here.” Word of this Alexandre had apparently spread, and someone from the office had managed to track him down and arrest him. “Our troublemaker’s been found.” With that, Montparnasse hung up as a tall, good-looking young man he could only assume was Alexandre was escorted into the room, and the general distinctly remembered him as being that handsome street sweeper. Montparnasse turned and nodded at the staff who had brought Alexandre in, silently ordering for them to leave the room, leaving Montparnasse alone with this odd young man.

“It’s a remarkable city!” Montparnasse started, once again fiddling with his gun like he tended to do. “Our Leningrad. All those people down there, coming and going, creating a _future_ for themselves… I could stand at the window for hours just looking at them, wondering why a couple of bad apples are getting up to mischief instead. I can see the old Moika Palace from here—funny business going on there. Counter-revolutionary behaviour, some are saying!”

“Why was I brought here?” Alexandre finally spoke, stepping up to Montparnasse with a cautious edge to his tone and a wary look in his blue eyes.

“You could tell me, comrade!” Montparnasse replied, his voice as authoritative as always, with an unexpected quiver that was immensely out of place in his voice. This young man was quite attractive, but he shouldn’t be making Montparnasse nervous. A street sweeper, and a man at that, should not be making a Bolshevik general nervous; it was completely unnatural, it went against the order of things, and Montparnasse would be damned if his superiors found out about such behaviour. Clearing his throat, he continued, “I almost stopped looking for you on the Nevsky Prospekt. It’s Alexandre, is it not?”

“Yes,” the golden-haired man confirmed in a guarded tone, seeming rather unsettled by his surroundings. As Montparnasse stepped up to him, he noticed that Alexandre was a bit taller, and he was only intrigued even more by this strange young man he had first encountered as a frightened street sweeper.

Montparnasse held out his hand for Alexandre to shake. “I’m Montparnasse, deputy commissioner.” When Alexandre didn’t take his hand, he went on, “If the uniform and the office give you a bad impression, we’re really not that bad.” He sounded as if he really was trying to convince Alexandre of that, with the awkward laugh at the end of his sentence. He grinned in quiet triumph when this time, Alexandre shook his hand for about a second before dropping it like a hot potato, and once again, Montparnasse noticed how he was shivering. “You’re shaking again! Would you care for some tea?”

Alexandre’s brow furrowed as he wondered what would happen if he said no. Nodding, he allowed Montparnasse to lead him back to the desk. “What’s the charge?” Alexandre asked sharply.

“There’s no charge!” Montparnasse replied, his tone sounding a bit too cheerful and forced. “Why should there be? With your job, food on the table, your own place, and a new order of things—”

“I’m grateful for that,” Alexandre interrupted, sitting down before the cluttered desk. He found himself wondering how someone as disorganised as this man in uniform had ever been appointed deputy commissioner.

“Which is why I’m warning you,” Montparnasse told him coldly, the sudden change in his tone of voice giving Alexandre a bad feeling. “Leave this world of make-believe you’re in before it’s too late.”

Alexandre considered Montparnasse’s words, wondering why he was so concerned about Alexandre wanting to find out if he was Prince Enjolras or not. “I don’t understand.”

Montparnasse gave the golden-haired man a frigid look that shook Alexandre to his core, telling him flatly, “If you really were who you’re pretending to be, they would kill you without hesitation or remorse.”

Alexandre drew back ever so slightly, never having considered that before. Why did these people care so much if a member of the imperial family had survived? It seemed absurd to Alexandre. He glanced out the window at the Nevsky Prospekt below, mildly impressed by the view as he reasoned, “Everyone imagines being someone else, don’t they? I’m no different. It’s a harmless enough fantasy—”

“No, Alexandre, it’s dangerous,” Montparnasse contradicted, a stony look in his dark eyes. “The Valjeans are gone. Every last one of them. They don’t exist anymore.” He paused for a moment before saying quietly, “My father was one of the guards.”

“I don’t want to hear this,” Alexandre said tersely. His nightmares were quite enough, thank you very much. He stood up and was just about to leave before Montparnasse spoke again.

“When he was told to fire, he obeyed orders.” Alexandre turned around to look at Montparnasse, reluctantly sitting back down. The general observed him, deciding that he really was quite the looker. _If only he would abide by the law,_ he thought, sighing. The golden-haired man had a perplexed look on his face as Montparnasse began to explain.

“Not all rumours are true, you know,” the Bolshevik general informed Alexandre coolly. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear on the streets. I was just a boy, and I lived the truth behind the tale—nobody got away.”

Montparnasse distinctly remembered how he had watched from a window as the imperial family was escorted back into the Ipatiev House, all of them completely clueless as to what was about to happen to them. They had been living there for quite some time, stripped of their wealth. Some servants had been allowed in with them, and he recalled how he had seen guards conversing outside, their guns at their sides, as he watched his father join them.

“I saw the Valjean children,” Montparnasse continued, giving Alexandre a bad feeling. “The brothers, how they clung to each other, the youngest son with his pride, and their little sister, barely fourteen.” The general remembered watching the princes talking to their sister, seeming to reassure her about the guards. He had watched as the youngest son bent down to speak quietly to his sister, light catching in his golden curls, and he recalled how the oldest brother, the Tsesarevich Combeferre, had kissed her forehead in reassurance. It had been obvious that the brothers doted on their little sister, seeming extremely protective of her as they were all escorted into the house and down into the cellar.

“I remember my father leaving the house that night the Valjeans met their fate,” Montparnasse went on, looking back on how he had asked his father about where he was going, only to be met by silence. “He had his pistol with him.” He took several deep breaths as he began to slowly pace the room, toying with the gun in his hand as Alexandre stared at him with a look of utmost shock and bewilderment.

“A revolution is a simple thing, Alexandre,” Montparnasse stated imperiously. “I heard it all—the shots, the screams. But what I remember the most was the silence afterwards.” The sound of the gunfire, immediately followed by anguished screams, mostly incomprehensible with some names interspersed throughout were forever etched into his mind. He remembered the brothers screaming their sister’s name, tormented sobs ringing out through the air. One final blood-curdling scream had rang out before everything fell frighteningly silent.

Montparnasse took a deep breath, recalling how he had felt as if his childhood had ended right there at the silence that followed the screams, as he stood before the window, staring out at the afternoon sun shining down on the Nevsky Prospekt. “I was no longer a boy. When my father came home, he said not to ask about it. He didn’t live much longer after that; my mother told me he died of shame.” He turned around to face an astounded Alexandre, an unreadable expression on his face. “Now I ask myself: could I have pulled the trigger if I had been told?”

As Montparnasse came to the end of his tale, turning around once again to stare down at the street, Alexandre grew more and more disturbed and stood up, taking hesitant steps towards the other man. “Thank you for your wording… comrade,” Alexandre said, standing beside the general at the window.

Montparnasse turned to face the taller man, telling him quietly, “It’s Montparnasse. Please.”

“Montparnasse.” Alexandre noticed that the general seemed to be sizing him up and stiffened, disliking it when near strangers stared at him like that. Eventually he locked eyes with the general, and he drew back slightly.

“Your eyes,” Montparnasse murmured, looking into Alexandre’s bright blue eyes. “The Valjean eyes…”

“I’m late for work,” Alexandre told him tersely, beginning to take a few steps towards the door, wanting nothing more than to get out of this damned office.

“As your new friend, be careful, Alexandre,” Montparnasse told him. Alexandre nodded hastily and had just gotten past the general when he felt a hand grab his bicep. He turned around, once again stiff as a board.

“And as deputy commissioner Montparnasse,” he continued, his tone taking a decidedly more menacing turn, “be _very_ careful.”

Alexandre nodded once more, and once Montparnasse had let go of his arm, he speed-walked to the door as quickly as he could. Montparnasse merely stared after him, disregarding the odd feelings the street sweeper made him feel as he wondered if he really could be the lost prince. He did have the Valjean eyes.

He thought nothing of it, sitting down at his desk and resuming his work as usual.

* * *

“Something stinks,” one of the young women in the square complained, stumbling around with a bottle of vodka in her hand. It was early evening, and she was gathered with two of her cronies as they watched people on the avenue come and go. The days were growing colder as they entered autumn, and to her distaste, vodka was scarce. She had managed to nick quite a few from the marketplace though, and most of them had been stowed away in a place she had forgotten about at this point.

“As long as there’s vodka!” one of her companions crowed, grabbing the bottle from her despite her indignant protests.

“You keep going on like that and you’ll be drinking that vodka in _hell_ ,” another one of the men spat at him, taking the bottle away from him and smashing it on the cobblestone pavement, earning himself a yell and a punch from the woman.

“That was _my_ vodka, you arse!” she yelled, about to initiate a brawl before she heard voices speaking.

“They know where we’re living,” a male voice stated urgently, and the men and the woman turned their heads to see none other than the elusive Éponine herself, accompanied by a tall, handsome young man with golden curls upon his head and piercing blue eyes. “His name is Montparnasse.”

“Well, if it isn’t the princess of Petersburg!” the woman shouted out, sneering at Éponine, who had turned her head to glare at her and her companions. “We thought you were in _Paris_ ,” she went on jeeringly, drawing out the last syllable.

“We missed you, old partner in crime,” one of the men added, wiggling his eyebrows implicatively when he saw that she wasn’t alone.

“Ooh, who’s this?” the last man, the man who had smashed the vodka bottle, drawled in interest, looking Alexandre up and down with a wildly inappropriate look in his eyes and making the golden-haired man immensely uncomfortable. “Got yourself a _boyfriend_?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Éponine replied, her tone rather dismissive. “And it’s none of your business.”

“Prince Enjolras himself!” the woman sneered, standing up on a stone bench to tower above them all. “Bet she’s got you bowing for her like a regular little tsarevich!”

“You going to Paris, _mon cher_?” one of the men taunted, earning himself a steely blue-eyed glare from Alexandre.

“Have a drink with us, Éponine!” the woman invited, looking around for her bottle of vodka before seeing the smashed glass and the spilled liquid on the pavement. “Well, if we manage to find more vodka…”

“Come on, Éponine, I don’t like these people,” Alexandre muttered under his breath, taking Éponine’s hand and pulling her back before one of the men walked up to him, imposing and intimidating.

“Oh, too good for us, are you?” he asked, malice in his tone.

“If you don’t want him, Éponine, I’ll gladly take him,” the woman told Éponine bluntly, grabbing Alexandre’s wrist before she was swatted away. Glaring up at the golden-haired man, she growled, “Oh, you think you’re something, don’t you?”

“Leave us alone!” Éponine shouted, wondering how the hell she had managed to put up with them about a year ago as she punched one of the men in the stomach before kicking the other where the sun didn’t shine, provoking a brawl. The woman growled angrily and rushed at her before Éponine punched her in the chest, knocking the wind out of her, and the men were beginning to get back on their feet before Alexandre retrieved a stick from the side of the road and started chasing them off with it. Wheezing, the woman crawled away and got to her feet, running as fast as her legs could take her while Alexandre chased the men away with his stick, letting out a strange, vaguely inhuman noise as he did so. Éponine fell back onto the stone bench as Alexandre screamed, “Next time, I won’t go so easy!”

“Where did you learn that?” Éponine asked in disbelief, placing her hand over her racing heart as she struggled to calm her breathing. “You were… good.”

“Want to see what else I can do?” Alexandre hollered, about to run off with his stick before Éponine jumped to her feet and grabbed his arm, pulling him back with much difficulty due to him being an entire seven inches taller than her. He turned around and backed away, brandishing the stick in her direction as he told her, “Don’t come closer. I could hurt you.” He sounded rather fearful of his own abilities as Éponine spoke again.

“I believe you!” she assured him, an exasperated edge to her voice. She held out her hand, asking for the stick, and Alexandre begrudgingly handed it to her and took a seat on the bench.

“I didn’t walk halfway across Russia without learning how to defend myself,” he told her in a guarded tone as she disposed of the stick near a pile of trash. “You’ve had it easy.”

“Not so easy,” Éponine replied, turning around to find him sitting on the bench. She walked back to him, informing him somberly, “My mother was an anarchist. She died in a labour camp for her convictions, and my father was already dead. To be honest, I don’t really remember him.”

Alexandre drew back, a look of surprise and incredulity crossing his face at this new information. “Who raised you, then?”

“Nobody!” Éponine huffed, taking a seat on top of the backrest. “I raised myself.”

“Well, that explains everything,” Alexandre muttered under his breath. Unfortunately, Éponine heard and promptly socked him in the arm.

“Keep in mind that I’m your ticket to Paris,” she snapped at him, taking a potato she had bought earlier out of her satchel and handing it to him before crossing her arms across her chest. “Talk to me like that and you just might find yourself in the streets again.”

Alexandre gave her a dirty look before assuming a calm manner once again, raising an eyebrow as he questioned, “Hey, Éponine, do you really think I’m royalty?”

Her hard gaze softened, and she responded immediately, her tone taking a considerably more amiable tone. “You know I do.”

“Then quit bossing me around!” Alexandre huffed irritably, earning himself another punch from the fiery brunette.

“Little shit,” she muttered under her breath, wondering why the hell she still put up with him. Yeah, he was an unfairly good-looking fellow and she’d be lying is she said she didn’t think about kissing those lips of his every once in a while, but that was besides the point! She had a duty to fulfil, and she did not need her heart getting in the way. He was their Prince Enjolras, and she was going to pull this off if it was the last thing she did. She desperately needed that reward money, and she had already begun to think about what she would do with it.

“I’m older than you,” Alexandre reminded her. Éponine groaned. He just had to be a smartass, didn’t he? “Tell me more about how you raised yourself.”

Éponine glowered at him, bringing her legs to her chest and resting her chin against her kneecaps as she muttered, “You just want an excuse to make fun of me.”

“No, really, I’m interested!” Alexandre assured her, placing a hand over hers and making her heart stop for a millisecond. “Tell me.”

Éponine sighed, giving in as she slowly lowered her legs, her hands gripping the edge of the backrest and leaning back ever so slightly. “Well, for starters, I grew up on the sly in the slums and the gutters of Petersburg. I was just a kid—eight or so—and I was learning how to take care of myself, how to get by.” She chuckled to herself, recalling memories of how awful those years had been. She had been forced to grow up too soon, just a little girl in the streets, learning how to fend for herself and two others. “I had two siblings,” she revealed quietly.

Alexandre’s blue eyes widened in surprise, and he asked gingerly, “What happened to them?”

Éponine let out a long-winded sigh, muttering regretfully, “They died. I couldn’t save them.” When her mother had been sent off to a labour camp, Éponine had been left with Azelma and Gavroche. Azelma had been five, while Gavroche was only two, and despite her best efforts, Éponine hadn’t been able to save them, watching as they succumbed to starvation and hypothermia, and she had watched with tears in her eyes as their frail little bodies were carried away by two police officers. She still regretted not doing enough to save them to this day, and she realised just then that she had tears in her eyes at the memories of her dear siblings, immediately wiping them away with the sleeve of her coat. She had a reputation to uphold; she can’t be seen crying.

Alexandre took one of her hands in his, squeezing it. As irritating as she was, he didn’t want to see her cry.

Clearing her throat in an attempt to get herself together, Éponine went on, “I bartered for stuff, stole food, learned how to use my head… I took every single chance I got. I had to be clever. Otherwise I’d end up dead.” _Like Zelma and Gav._

Alexandre cocked his head, gazing at her in interest and slight pity. He sympathised with her, somehow feeling as if he himself knew what it was like to lose a sibling too. Maybe she wasn’t just the short-tempered, surly—although admittedly beautiful, in an unkempt sort of way—young woman he had first met months ago. She was becoming more and more intriguing by the moment as she told him of her tale, going on, “Some survived. Some didn’t. Some gave up just like that, but I never did. Come on!” Éponine hopped off the bench and took Alexandre’s hand, pulling him up and out into the streets.

The two of them ran through the cobblestone streets, past buildings and people and officers as night rapidly fell upon them, blending in among the crowds. Alexandre let Éponine pull him along, unaware of the oddly fond look on his face as he let her take him to wherever it was she wanted to take him. Éponine let out a hearty laugh when an officer nearby yelled at them to slow down, ignoring him and going faster as Alexandre ran behind her, his hand in hers. Several minutes later, they were on a bridge overlooking the Catherine Canal—except it was no longer the Catherine Canal, what with the Bolsheviks and their damn obsession with renaming everything—with a majestic sight of the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood. Éponine placed her hands on the railing of the bridge, leaning over it and gazing at the cathedral in the distance.

“This is my favourite place in the city,” she told him softly. “You can see all the spires from here, down to the piers!” She pointed at a spot in the distance, unthinkingly placing her other hand on top of Alexandre’s as she said, “I’d be down there on that quay, selling stolen souvenirs of the city.” She clearly remembered yelling out blatant lies in desperate attempts to sell stolen goods, and stomping her foot in despair whenever merchants ignored a little girl trying to earn money to survive.

“What a life you’ve led,” Alexandre remarked drily.

“Shut up and let me finish,” Éponine pretended to snap, grinning up at him and lightly bumping his shoulder. To her utmost surprise, he grinned back. “Funny how you can hate a city with all of your being, but there’s always a tiny part of you that loves it so. I learned my shit in some rough company—just a little girl, forced to grow up too soon.” She remembered befriending shady men and suspicious women in her desperate attempts to survive, learning how to be tough and unfeeling as she learned how to get by. Looking up at Alexandre, she continued, “We can do what we’re told, and we can go where we’re led, but my mother was smarter than that. She taught me how to see past all that, to look ahead, and so now here I am—there’s absolutely nothing here to hold me, and there’s nobody I owe. I’ve stayed here too long, and it’s about damn time that I left.”

Alexandre’s brow furrowed as he vaguely remembered someone saying similar words to him years and years ago, but he said nothing of it, listening to Éponine speak instead. “My mother used to bring me here,” she said rather wistfully, gazing at the cathedral in the distance. “She would lift me up on her shoulders so I could have a better view.” Her voice deepening slightly in an imitation of an older woman’s contralto, she declared, “'Bet you could see all the way to Finland from up there, ’Ponine!'”

“’Ponine?” Alexandre asked curiously, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s what she called me,” Éponine explained, sighing wistfully as she gazed at the lights reflecting off the water of the canal. “There isn’t a day I don’t miss her.”

The pair fell silent for a few moments, merely gazing down at their reflections in the water, before Alexandre broke the silence by saying, “So neither of us has a family.”

“You don’t know that yet,” Éponine responded rather shortly, looking up to look him in the eye, holding his gaze. “Who knows what we might find in Paris, right?” She took his hand and brought him back to a nearby bench, sitting down beside him. “Now tell me about your little dog.”

“His name was Toby,” Alexandre offered. He looked pensively into the distance, murmuring, “I loved him so much.”

When he fell silent after that, Éponine clicked her tongue and said, “Well, don’t stop there.”

“I’m not as strong as you think I am,” Alexandre snapped, turning away. Éponine glared at his back before she got an idea.

“Close your eyes.” When Alexandre turned his head to give her an odd, quizzical look, she laughed and said, “Just trust me!”

When Alexandre begrudgingly did as he was told, Éponine took the music box out of her satchel and ordered softly, “Put your hand out.” Once she had placed the music box in his hands, she brushed some of his blond hair aside and whispered into his ear, “Now open.”

Drawing back, she watched as Alexandre’s blue eyes slowly opened, widening at the sight of the music box. Chuckling, she told him lightly, “You’ve worked hard! You’ve earned it.”

“What is it?” Alexandre enquired, turning the music box over in his hands in fascination, inspecting the intricate carvings in the sides.

“A music box,” Éponine prompted, somewhat awkwardly patting him on the back. “Pretty, isn’t it?”

“Very much so,” Alexandre replied, finding a winding key at the bottom of the music box.

“It’s uh, kind of broken, though,” Éponine admitted as Alexandre turned it over, enchanted by it, and she turned away to look at passersby. “I can’t even open the damn thing.”

Just then she heard the distinct sound of tinkling, haunting music and looked up to see Alexandre gazing at the open music box in wonder, completely enraptured, beginning to look rather distant as he stood up. “How did you do that?” she asked in amazement, only for him to not respond. _Is he almost going to pass out again?_ Éponine thought worriedly, almost flinching when he began to speak in that dreamy, faraway tone once again like he had when she first met him.

“There was a ball,” he recalled, his blue-eyed gaze still fixated on the music box. “Everyone was beautifully dressed. There were… three boys? They were all older than me, I think. One of them told me to come dance with them, so I did, and—and I don’t know.” He began to hum along, entranced by the soft music, and Éponine was beginning to grow more and more alarmed as he seemed to drift further away, walking away to stand at the edge of the bridge.

Alexandre suddenly found himself in a ballroom again, dressed to the nines, and he was in the centre of the enormous room, a pair of small hands in his. It was a young girl, a small, blonde, blue-eyed girl of barely fourteen years, a girl who bore a striking resemblance to him. He was laughing, dancing around and around with her and lifting her up by the waist just as three boys older than him approached them. Alexandre looked at the boy who seemed closest in age to him, and he let go of one of the girl’s hands to take the other boy’s. Soon, all five of them were dancing around in a circle in the centre of the ballroom, their laughter being drowned out by the delighted colloquy of the guests. As a woman and a man who resembled the children watched them—Alexandre saw that they were the most grandly dressed, the woman with her heavy bejewelled dress, hanging sleeves, and tiara—he danced with the three boys and the girl, people he barely remembered, incomplete memories coming back together to form a vague scene in his mind. _A ball,_ he thought, staring off into space as he listened to that haunting tune from the music box.

“Alexandre, are you okay?” Éponine asked, genuinely concerned as she stood up to stand beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Someone gave me this music box,” Alexandre murmured, now finding himself in a large bedroom with a person whose face he couldn’t quite recognise, the person sitting across from him on the bed. “They told me… they told me to remember them. They said this song—this song was our lullaby.”

“Okay, Alexandre, I’m seriously worried now,” Éponine told him, gently shaking him in an attempt to break him out of his trance. “Are you okay?”

When the music slowed to a stop, he finally snapped out of it and turned, blinking at her as if he was just realising she was there and seeming completely lost for about a few seconds as he closed the music box. He quickly regained his composure, asking her in a cheerful tone that sounded suspiciously forced, “How soon do you think we can leave? They’re cancelling trains right and left, you know. Here—” He took some money out of his pocket and handed it to her, telling her, “I worked an extra shift this week. It’s not much, but every little bit helps, doesn’t it?”

Éponine bit her lip, unsure as to how to break it to him, finally blurting out, “We’re not even close to getting there!” When a look of complete disappointment dawned on Alexandre’s face, she quickly continued, “I thought I could get us out before they closed the borders for good!”

“You were my only hope!” Alexandre burst out indignantly, sounding incredibly hurt as he began to back away from her, clutching the music box to his chest as if his life depended on it.

“There must be someone else who can help you!” Éponine reasoned desperately, taking a step towards him, sticking a hand out with the money he gave her clutched in her fist. “I’m sorry!”

“I don’t want your money!” Alexandre snapped, batting her arm away.

“It’s _your_ money!” Éponine pointed out in exasperation, waving it back at him even more insistently.

“It’s _our_ money!” Alexandre shouted, backing away and holding the music box like a lifeline. “I _trusted_ you, you—you—”

“I _said_ I was sorry!” Éponine yelled, turning away and huffing in exasperation as she threw her arms into the air, looking up at the heavens.

“I didn’t trust you enough.” Alexandre’s next statement stopped Éponine in her tracks, and although she didn’t turn around to face him, she didn’t leave as she was originally intending to either. “Now you close your eyes.”

Éponine scoffed, crossing her arms across her chest as she stared at the lights bouncing off the Catherine Canal. “What for?”

“You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met,” Alexandre informed her bluntly, approaching her from behind as she reluctantly turned around. When she raised her eyebrows at his remark, he added quietly, “Almost as stubborn as me.”

“Ugh, fine.” Éponine, however unwilling she was, closed her eyes.

“Put your hand out.” Éponine reluctantly did as she was told, holding out her hand and feeling Alexandre’s long, calloused fingers dropping something into her palm. “All right. Open.”

She opened her eyes and nearly gasped out loud, laying her eyes upon something she never once thought in a million years she’d be holding. “It’s—a diamond?” she murmured in awe, turning back to stare at Alexandre in astonishment.

“A nurse found it sewn into my underclothes,” Alexandre explained, taking a few tentative steps towards Éponine. “She hid it for me until I was allowed to leave and kept it a secret, but why, I don’t know. She told me to not tell a soul until I absolutely had to.” He took another step towards her so he’d be standing right in front of her, towering above her as he concluded quietly, “I had to make sure I found someone I could completely trust.” He found himself staring at her, awaiting a reply, and for several painfully lengthy moments, she merely stared at the diamond in disbelief before she spoke.

“You’ve had it _all this time_ and you didn’t tell me?” Éponine asked slowly, angry again all of a sudden.

“Yes,” Alexandre replied, standing his ground.

“ _Why_?!” she shouted, causing him to take a step back in unpleasant surprise.

“It’s the only thing I have!” he shouted back. “Without it, I have  _nothing_!”

“How do you know I won’t just take it and leave you?” Éponine challenged sharply, stepping up to him until she was practically pressed up against him, glaring up into his blue eyes.

“I don’t think you will,” Alexandre replied, although his voice betrayed uncertainty.

“You know, if—if I were a boy, you’d—you’d be—” Éponine then threw her arms around Alexandre’s neck and embraced him instead of doing whatever it was she said she would do if she were a boy, surprising the hell out of him, and not long after she let go of him, Grantaire ran up to them in a state of distress, yelling some incomprehensible words before Éponine grabbed him by his arms and violently shook him to get him back to his right state.

“I’ve been looking for you two everywhere!” Grantaire managed to wheeze, out of breath after running all over the city in search of them. “The palace’s been raided! We’re dead if we go back there!”

Éponine held up the diamond to his eyes for him to see, and he immediately fell silent. “Good Lord,” he murmured, whistling appreciatively as he looked from her to Alexandre.

“He’s had it all along!” Éponine cried out, pointing an accusing finger at the golden-haired man close behind her.

“I didn’t trust either of you with it!” Alexandre defended, stepping up beside her.

“I don’t blame you,” Grantaire told him, eyes still fixed on the diamond before he looked back at Alexandre, a gleeful grin on his face. “Never mind that! All’s forgiven! Alexandre, I love you!” He threw his arms around the golden-haired man and nearly squeezed the breath out of him, catching him off-guard.

“R, I’m counting on you to get the exit papers!” Éponine shouted once Grantaire had detached himself from Alexandre. The brunet nodded quickly, wasting no time in running off, disappearing from view.

“Hurry! There’s a midnight train!” Alexandre yelled after Grantaire’s disappearing figure. “From the Finland station!” He soon began to run off, only for Éponine to shout after him.

“Where are you going?” she called out.

“They owe me a week’s worth of wages!” he called back over his shoulder, continuing to run off. “Every ruble counts!” With that, he turned a corner and disappeared from sight as Éponine was left alone in the middle of the street, clutching the diamond in her hand.

She turned it over, observing how the moonlight caught in the diamond as a look of utter shock and glee registered on her face. _Holy shit, we’re going to Paris._


	6. Chapter V - Let This Be a Sign, Let This Road Be Mine

“It’s a special train” were the first words Grantaire said when he met with Éponine and Alexandre at the train station, luggage in hand. “All aristocrats and intellectuals; all the people the Bolsheviks are out to get.” He handed Éponine and Alexandre their papers, telling them quietly, “We’re travelling as members of the Diaghilev Ballet Russe; they’ve taken Paris by storm.”

Alexandre looked around at the train station—the steam emitting from the trains, the frantic, hushed voices of the people rushing about all around them, the sheer desperation in the air—and he stopped to look at the train, never having seen anything like it. Just then he felt a hand on his shoulder and whirled around to find a sharply dressed old man standing before him with a look of disbelief in his eyes. Before he knew what was happening, the man had gasped and was shaking his hand, whispering, “God bless you!”

Éponine and Grantaire had turned to see the man vigorously shaking Alexandre’s hand, a look of stunned disbelief on his face, and their eyes widened as they exchanged looks of astonishment. Once the man had gone off, Grantaire whispered loudly, “I recognise him! That’s Count Myriel. He’s not just an aristocrat; he’s one of those intellectuals, too.” Grantaire bit his lip, remarking, “He’s a dead man on both counts.”

Just then, they heard a loud, booming voice overhead, reverberating through the train station. _“Train for Paris on track four. All aboard!”_

For the first time, Éponine grew nervous as she heard Grantaire say solemnly, “We should go.”

They realised that the platform had fallen silent, with Count Myriel speaking softly. Soon, others began to join in one by one, and Éponine, Alexandre, and Grantaire realised that they were reciting a prayer of farewell to their beloved Russia. It then hit the three of them for the first time that they would never be returning, the one place they’ve all known. It was finally time to say goodbye to their motherland—never to return, never to look back. _How can I say goodbye?_ Éponine wondered, thinking of all the years she had survived in the streets and how she still felt awful about letting her siblings die under her watch. She hated Petersburg—by God, she hated it with a burning passion—but it was all she had ever known. It shouldn’t be this hard to leave. _I’m finally breaking free,_ she reminded herself, turning to look up at Alexandre, who seemed to be lost in his own thoughts.

 _Never to return,_ Alexandre thought, holding on to his suitcase as he subconsciously listened to the prayer Count Myriel was leading. _You’ve raised me,_ he thought, looking back on his memories of travelling Russia, alone and frightened, fending for himself. He recalled intimidating police officers bringing him to their offices, telling him he resembled someone he had never even heard of until that first police encounter, someone they said should have been dead along with the rest of his family. He looked around—a couple was clinging to each other, the wife continuously looking down at her baby bump, and elsewhere on the platform, a man was in tears as he held his daughter. It rattled Alexandre somewhat—so many lives had been ruined in the past ten years as the Bolsheviks rose to power, and now here they all are, making one last, desperate attempt to escape. Soon enough, he was the only one left on the platform, feeling as if he wasn’t quite ready to leave Russia just yet, and Éponine called for him to come join them on board. Clutching the handle of his suitcase, he joined Éponine and Grantaire, finding an empty compartment and sitting at the edge of a seat with Éponine squished between him and Grantaire.

Alexandre felt a jolt as the train began to move forward on the tracks, slowly at first before gaining speed. He heard Grantaire whine, “This is ridiculous! I paid for first class! We should be sipping on champagne and having caviar!”

“R, there is no first class!” Éponine reminded him bitingly. Rolling her eyes, she stated, “Everyone is _equal_ now.”

“You don’t have to sound so damn happy about it,” Grantaire retorted sarcastically. The two of them hadn’t noticed a woman come in and take a seat beside Alexandre, and much to the golden-haired man’s distaste, she had begun smoking a cigarette.

“How dare you smoke without my permission?” Alexandre reprimanded, finally attracting Éponine and Grantaire’s attention.

The woman narrowed her eyes at Alexandre and blew a puff of smoke in his face, retorting, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the Tsarevich Enjolras Valjean!” As Alexandre spoke, his confidence and indignance growing with each word as he rose to his feet, Éponine’s eyes widened in alarm and she grabbed his arm, Grantaire repeatedly motioning for him to stop talking. The woman sitting beside Alexandre stood up and backed away, a derisive look in her eyes.

“I’m in a compartment with a crazy man!” she yelled out, leaving to sit elsewhere as Éponine forced Alexandre back into his seat, staring at him in shock.

“Warn us next time you do that!” Éponine hissed, smacking Alexandre’s arm.

“I wanted to see what it felt like saying I was him!” Alexandre replied hotly, glaring back at her.

“It’s a long trip! You have plenty of time to practice!” Grantaire interjected in annoyance, giving them both a look. They were always arguing—he suspected that the constant biting remarks and sarcastic replies were a cover for an unspoken attraction between the both of them. He wasn’t stupid—he saw the way Éponine looked at Alexandre during the rare times they weren’t bickering and how Alexandre looked at Éponine whenever her back was turned. It was quite obvious that sparks flew between them, even if those sparks tended to ignite fiery arguments and furious squabbles more often than not. Sighing, he continued, “In Paris, your first challenge will be the old tsar’s distant relative and young assistant, Count Jehan Prouvaire.” He chuckled at the mention of the count, sighing as he tried to remember what he had looked like the last time they saw each other ten years ago. “Nobody has access to His Majesty without him.”

“He sounds like a dragon,” Éponine quipped wryly, readjusting her cap as she squirmed at being squished between the two men with her in that cramped compartment.

“No, he’s really the opposite!” Grantaire contradicted, a bright look in his green eyes. “He’s about your age, you know,” he told Alexandre. “Jehan was romantic, compassionate, full of life…” Grantaire leaned back in his seat and sighed dreamily, gazing out the window. He knew that the new order would find such behaviour to be unnatural, but he simply couldn’t help what he felt, and he couldn’t give a damn about what those Bolsheviks thought. “Everything I looked for in a person, man or woman,” he murmured, staring out the window. “He gave me a diamond-studded watch.”

Alexandre bit his lip to keep himself from smiling at the cheerful way Grantaire spoke, asking, “Did you love him?” Unlike most Russians, he didn’t think such behaviour between two men was unnatural, thinking that people should be free to love whomever they wanted to love.

“Oh, I loved him, all right.” Grantaire leaned in to whisper confidentially to Éponine, “But I loved the watch more.”

Éponine raised an eyebrow, asking, “What happened to it?”

“I lost it,” Grantaire muttered sheepishly as Alexandre got up to exit the compartment to explore the train carriage a little bit. Éponine shook her head, an amused smile playing at her lips as she also got up to walk out the compartment, leaving Grantaire alone with his thoughts.

“I hope Jehan’s happy to see me,” Grantaire mused as he watched Éponine walk off. “How could he not be?”

He leaned back and spread his arms on the backrest of the seat, his mind beginning to drift off to thoughts of his beloved Jehan. He still remembered him dearly—his red hair and sideburns and his bright blue eyes, always so full of light and love—and the last time Grantaire saw him, he had been seventeen while Jehan had been sixteen, mingling with the princes and befriending their sister. Grantaire wondered how Jehan had fared in Paris with the old tsar, wondering if he even remembered the little affair between them. He was excited to see the young count again, remembering how he had constantly flirted with him under the guise of being a count and how they had snuck around behind the backs of the close-minded court, making sure to keep their scandalous little affair a secret. _I’ll win him back,_ Grantaire thought confidently, leaning back against the backrest. The train couldn’t go fast enough.

Outside the compartment, Alexandre was standing before a window, staring out at the endless forests rushing by, lost in his thoughts once again. His hands were shaking, his heart thundering in his chest as he watched the Russian countryside rush by. _Meet the royal… mess,_ he thought, rather hopeless, wondering how on earth he was ever going to be able to pull this off and why he had let it go this far. _Stop wondering!_ he scolded himself, reminding himself to hold his head high and smile. Even so, he couldn’t help but wonder why he had said yes. Éponine and Grantaire _had_ told him countless times about how much he resembled Prince Enjolras, and he was beginning to think that maybe there really was a possibility he was the lost tsarevich. Dawn was rapidly approaching, and soon the sun was peeking out from behind the trees as Alexandre stared out, lost in thought.

Éponine was at another window at the other end of the carriage, telling herself repeatedly to stop being so damn nervous. They were all going to pull this off, she was going to make sure of that, and once they’ve put on their show, she’ll get that reward she so desperately wanted. No, not wanted— _needed_. She needed that money for a better life, and she was already beginning to think of what she could do with all that money. Maybe she’ll get herself some basic necessities first and then use the rest of the money for her own pleasure. Yes, that would be ideal. All she needed to do was pull this off. She could do it. She could and she would.

Glancing sideways, she noticed Alexandre staring out a window, his head tilted, and she decided to approach him. He was so distracted by his thoughts, he didn’t notice that she had been standing beside him for a few moments until she spoke.

“Lovely day, isn’t it?” she remarked lightly, turning her head and looking up at him.

“Yes,” Alexandre replied candidly, “for a totally illegal getaway.”

“Shush!” Éponine socked him in the arm, something she had developed a habit of doing, and Alexandre caught himself smirking teasingly at her. She bit her lip to keep herself from grinning back as she bumped his shoulder, going back to staring out the window like he was doing. “We’ll know what’s what soon enough. We’ll pull this off and then we’ll get the reward! I’m sure of it.”

“Finding out who I am is reward enough,” Alexandre responded airily. “This chance is all I’ve got.”

“We’re almost out,” Éponine said, cocking her head and gazing out at the sun rising above the trees. “And then we’ll go from there!”

Alexandre turned his head to look at her and catch her eye, beginning to warm up to this feisty, surly young woman he had met all those months ago in his quest for exit papers. Maybe she wasn’t completely insufferable after all. She looked up at him to find him gazing at her with a thoughtful look in those bright blue eyes of his, and the corners of her mouth turned up in a tiny smile at the way he was looking at her.

After some time in which they simply held each other’s gaze, Éponine awkwardly cleared her throat, wondering why the _hell_ she was beginning to feel so drawn to this irritatingly good-looking man who may very well be Prince Enjolras. She found that he didn’t annoy her as much when he kept his mouth shut. Ignoring that thought, she told him quietly, “We should get back.” She led him back to their compartment, taking their seats with Grantaire. Not long after, the train screeched to a stop.

“What’s happening?” Alexandre questioned, his brow furrowing as Éponine frantically shushed him. Two Bolshevik guards came by their compartment, and Alexandre barely had time to pretend to be absorbed in a book he had brought along when the guards asked for papers.

“Morning, gentlemen,” Grantaire greeted, managing to keep his voice calm. “Is there a problem?”

“We’re looking for someone who was illegally leaving the country,” one of the guards replied curtly.

“They had the right papers, didn’t they?” Grantaire questioned as Éponine kept silent, her eyes darting between the two guards as a sense of dread and unease filled her.

“He had the right papers, but they were under the wrong name,” the other guard explained harshly. “Count Myriel!”

Just then a gunshot rang out through the carriage, and a brief, horrifying image flashed through Alexandre’s mind, accompanied by the sound of a young girl’s scream. Blood stained the walls and the smashed windows, and a couple of bodies were lying dead on the ground nearby, their clothes drenched with blood. The sound of gunfire rang through the room, and he heard the distant sound of another anguished scream, this one sounding far more masculine. “No,” he whispered in shock, frozen in place. The guards went off to another compartment, and Grantaire got to his feet.

“I’ll go see what happened—” he began to say before Éponine cut him off.

“We know what happened,” she interjected, numb with shock. Beside her, Alexandre let out a shaky sob, triggered by the gunfire and stunned into silence by the frightful images that were running through his mind, and without thinking, she put an arm around him.

“Calm him down!” Grantaire whispered frantically, looking around them and exiting the compartment.

Grantaire wandered off to inspect the scene as Éponine desperately tried to calm Alexandre down, telling him softly, “We’ll be safe soon. Everything will be all right, Alexandre, please—”

“There were soldiers,” he interrupted, an unreadable expression on his face. Éponine stared at him curiously as he went on, “They were pointing their guns at us.”

“What _soldiers_?” Éponine asked, becoming more and more worried as Alexandre grew frantic, a flood of vague memories coming back and overwhelming him.

“They said they were taking us somewhere safe,” Alexandre murmured, his voice barely audible. “Toby’s little heart was beating against mine! ‘They won’t harm us,’ I told him. ‘They’re decent men!’”

“Nobody’s pointing guns at you, Alexandre!” Éponine gently shook him, trying to break him out of the trance he seemed to be in as she hissed, “You’re taking this too far!”

“What if I am really—” Éponine loudly shushed him, forcing him to look her in the eye.

“We’re almost out of Russia,” she told him quietly, seeing the fear and doubt in Alexandre’s blue eyes. “Once we’ve crossed the border, we’ll be safe.”

Alexandre fell silent and sighed. “You’re putting these ideas in my head,” he accused her, taking a deep breath to calm himself. “I’m starting to think they might be true.”

“Éponine!” Grantaire came back into the compartment, paper clenched in his fist and a wild look in his eyes, having nearly had a heart attack. Outside, there seemed to be quite a commotion, more gunshots and shouts ringing through the carriage. “Three Bolshevik officers just came on board with orders to arrest two men and a young woman!”

“That could be anybody!” Éponine protested, although her voice betrayed fear as she got to her feet, Alexandre doing the same.

Grantaire unrolled the sheet of paper in his hand, revealing photographs of him, Éponine, and Alexandre side by side. “I don’t think so!”

Éponine visibly paled, asking Grantaire shakily, “What do we do?”

“We’ll have to jump off!” Alexandre cried, grabbing his suitcase before rushing to the window and opening it, beginning to climb out after he threw his suitcase onto the grass.

“The train’s moving again!” Grantaire pointed out, beginning to think that the golden-haired man had gone mad. When Éponine climbed out after him after throwing her luggage out, holding on to the edge of the train for dear life, he groaned, “Not you too, Éponine!”

“You saw what happened to Count Myriel!” Alexandre shouted from outside the train, finally getting Grantaire to give in and throw out his suitcase, climbing out after them. He saw that Alexandre and Éponine were hanging on to the edge of the train, fearfully staring at the ground before them and how their luggage was getting farther by the moment. Éponine looked back and forth between Grantaire and Alexandre and back to the ground whizzing past, and in unison, they all shouted, “JUMP!”

* * *

_“The train crossed the Russian border and_ they weren’t on it _?!”_

Montparnasse was, once again, pacing back and forth in his office, looking out the window, and he flinched at the sound of the head general yelling through the phone, replying hastily, “it’s just a temporary setback! We’ll catch them soon enough! They think they can elude us, but they’ll end up here!”

 _“A ragged little upstart engaging in a crime,”_ the head general scoffed into the phone at the other end. _“Follow him to Paris. If he’s not Enjolras, bring him back. They’ll make an example of him.”_

Montparnasse gulped as he fixed his eyes on his disordered desk, asking tentatively, “And if he _is_ Enjolras?”

 _“Then finish the job for your father!”_ the head general snapped at the other end. _“Be a good son! It’s really that simple. All you have to do is pull the trigger, and the job will be done. It’s really up to you now. Enjoy your new position.”_ With that, the head general hung up, leaving a deafening silence in the office.

Montparnasse grabbed his gun and fidgeted with it as he thought of the situation. _Everyone imagines being someone else, don’t they?_ the sound of the young man’s voice echoed in Montparnasse’s mind. Remembering the imperial children’s screams, he felt torn between his duty and his own morals. The screams from the Ipatiev House had tormented him ever since he was a child, still haunted by the silence afterwards.

And then there was the way that Alexandre made him feel—he shouldn’t be feeling this way. He _knew_ he shouldn’t be feeling this way. His superiors would damn him for eternity if they ever found out he was even thinking such things, but he couldn’t help it—he found himself getting nervous around the young golden-haired man. The man with those blue eyes—the Valjean eyes. He claimed that it was simply a game, that he was innocent, but was he, really? _Does he really believe he’s the prince?_ Montparnasse thought, torn between duty and feelings. Going after him was the right thing to do—he knew that. Why was he even thinking twice?

 _I have to go after him,_ Montparnasse told himself firmly, beginning to walk around the office and gathering his things to pack up for his trip. _God, I was such a fool—I let him go._ An underhanded young man, acting on desperation. It didn’t matter anymore—he was going to receive the consequences no matter what. Alexandre was wilfully misleading him, Montparnasse knew that now.

He couldn’t allow these odd feelings—they only kept him from doing his duty. He fiddled with the gun in his hand, pacing back and forth and nearly burning a hole into the carpet. _If my father asked questions, where would he be?_ Montparnasse asked himself, brushing all conflicting thoughts out of his head as he attempted to focus on the duty at hand.

His father had been wracked with guilt for the rest of his life, eventually dying—dying of shame, Montparnasse’s mother had told him. He wondered how he would feel if he finished the job for his father, killing this Alexandre who may very well turn out to be Prince Enjolras. He was still constantly haunted by the screams and the gunfire, having lost his innocence on that day he heard the messy execution.

He remembered the princes and the princess—they had been so clueless, so oblivious as to what was about to happen to them. They had been conversing outside the Ipatiev House like they did every other day, laughing and chatting together as they reassured their sister of how there was no danger, of how they were safe there at the house. Little did they know they were coming to their end.

Montparnasse shuddered at the memories of the imperial children, taking his coat off of a hanger and pulling it on. For some reason, he found himself wanting so desperately to believe that Alexandre was telling the truth, but he remembered the look in the man’s blue eyes—deep down, Montparnasse knew he was lying. That Alexandre had a plan, a dangerous plan, and he and those other two criminals with him must be stopped.

 _I’ll have to go after him,_ Montparnasse told himself again, pulling his coat on and grabbing his things as he got ready to leave. Even so, he still found himself doubting his actions. _Still…_

* * *

“Éponine, wait!” Out of breath, Grantaire stumbled over as he, Éponine, and Alexandre made their way up a hill, and he grabbed his suitcase to keep himself from completely falling down. “Alexandre can’t go any further,” he panted, falling to his knees in the grass. “He’s exhausted.”

Alexandre, who was steps ahead from Grantaire, turned around with an incredulous look in his blue eyes. Éponine was further ahead than the both of them and turned around, scoffing as she ran back to begrudgingly help Grantaire to his feet.

“The Polish border is only ten kilometres away! We’ll be safe there!” she shouted, beginning to run as fast as her short legs could take her with Alexandre by her side. Grumbling, Grantaire began to run after them, lugging his luggage along.

“Wait for me!”

The next several days were quite eventful—days and days of walking and hitchhiking, desperate for a ride and taking whatever they got, no matter how shady the drivers seemed to be. They stopped every few hours or so in a town each day, grabbing a meal and catching their breath. After a week and a half, the trio finally reached France by car, finding themselves on a hill and surrounded by trees. Grantaire announced fondly, “La belle France!”

Éponine narrowed her eyes, turning around and surveying her surroundings, doing a complete 360, and she wrinkled her nose, remarking distastefully, “It looks just like Russia!”

Grantaire pursed his lips and glared at her, stung by her comment, retorting, “France looks _nothing_ like Russia. It looks like France!”

“Except Russia is more beautiful,” Alexandre interjected, looking around him at the leaves, which were all turning various shades of red, orange, and gold. Despite it all, he missed Russia dearly, but he had come here to France for a reason—someone was waiting in Paris for him, he knew it.

Exasperated, Grantaire burst out, “Russia is not the world! Open your minds to all this and learn something like—”

“No need to get emotional,” Éponine interrupted sardonically, rolling her eyes.

“The last time I was in Paris, I was just a teenager,” Grantaire murmured mostly to himself, recalling fond memories of nights spent whispering secrets and quiet declarations of love over the pillows in Jehan’s bed, and his heart ached all the more for the handsome ginger.

Alexandre let out a long-winded sigh, wondering aloud, “Why did we stop? I’m going to go ask the driver what’s wrong.”

Éponine turned to watch Alexandre running off to speak with the driver, and she scoffed, “Look at him, rattling off in French with that driver! You’ve taught him well!” She ran up to Grantaire, putting an arm around her best friend and laughing. “Don’t be surprised if we get away with this, R.”

Grantaire’s mind went back to all the times Éponine and Alexandre had been at each other’s throats, the look in their eyes always giving everything away—there was an unspoken attraction between the both of them, Grantaire just knew it—and he gave her a look, a grave look that gave her an uneasy feeling, and before she could ask what was wrong, Grantaire told her quietly, “He’ll break your heart, Éponine.”

Éponine fell silent, wondering what the hell Grantaire was talking about. “Be quiet,” she muttered at last, her face turning the faintest shade of pink. “What do you know about anything?”

“If they accept him as Enjolras,” Grantaire pointed out, “you’ll never see him again.”

Éponine spluttered, unable to form coherent words for a few moments as her face turned bright red before she managed to spit out, “Yeah, you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

As she walked away from Grantaire, fuming, Alexandre returned with their luggage, telling them, “This is as far as he goes! We’re almost there!” He pointed towards the top of the hill, exclaiming, “From up there, he said, you can just see Paris!”

Grantaire let out a shout of delight, grabbing his suitcase from Alexandre and yelling, “Prepare to be amazed!” He began to make his way up the hill, not even thinking about how much he hated running.

“We made it!” Éponine cheered, triumphantly pumping a fist into the air at the thought of being so close to her reward. Alexandre turned around to face her, smiling.

“Even when I was angry at you,” he started, walking up to Éponine, “I never doubted you once.” Her breath caught in her throat when he embraced her, whispering into her ear, “Thank you, Éponine.”

After Éponine rather awkwardly returned the hug, Alexandre drew back, a smile on his face, and Éponine felt as if she had stopped breathing as they held each other’s gaze, merely gazing into each other’s eyes for a few moments before she managed to say, “Don’t thank me. Thank Grantaire.”

“I can see the Eiffel Tower!” Grantaire shouted from the top of the hill, beckoning Éponine and Alexandre over.

Éponine turned her head at the sound of Grantaire’s voice and grabbed her suitcase, rushing to join him and nearly losing her breath at the sight of the magnificent city, gazing at it in awe from the top of the hill. “Alexandre, come see!” she called over her shoulder. When he didn’t come, she yelled again, “ _Alexandre_!”

Alexandre went to sit on top of his suitcase, a million thoughts racing through his head and making him unable to think straight. _This is it,_ he thought, shivering at the thought of being so close. He was so close to finding out who he was, it was unbelievable. _You can’t turn back now. Don’t turn back. Not when we’re so close._

He stood up and looked around, hardly able to believe that he was out of Russia. Everyone was always talking about how life was full of choices, and yet none of them ever think to mention fear. The world seemed so big, so vast—he was so close to finding out who he was.

He looked at the top of the hill, where Éponine and Grantaire were waving for him to join them, and he turned back. _There’s someone waiting down that road,_ he told himself, grabbing his suitcase. All those years of dreams just couldn’t be wrong.

He began to think about it—arms opening wide, the feeling of safety and being wanted, the feeling of being finally home. He began to slowly trudge up the hill, getting closer to finding who he was with each step he took. _Maybe I’ll find my purpose, too, while I’m at it,_ he mused. For now, though, he was focused on finding his family. He just won’t be complete until he found them.

 _There must have been a time when I had one,_ he reasoned. _Home, love, family…_

Alexandre began to walk with more purpose, his confidence growing with every step. Éponine and Grantaire had gone back to staring in awe at the city from above, and he smiled at the wonder in Éponine’s voice. He would never admit it, but she had grown on him.

 _Who was I?_ Alexandre wondered, trudging up the hill to meet Éponine and Grantaire. _I’m going back to who I was, and then, on to find my future._ There were things his heart still needed to know, and he desperately hoped this was a sign that he was getting closer to finding out those things.

Alexandre gasped at the sight of the city when he reached the top of the hill. It was absolutely stunning, a sight to behold—yellow light illuminating the city, the Seine flowing through the city, the Eiffel Tower rising above it all… He felt as if his breath had been taken away.

He grinned to himself, deliriously happy at just how close he was to finding himself.

_I’m almost home._

 


	7. Chapter VI - Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart

“Welcome to Paris, _mes amis_!” Grantaire announced gleefully as they walked down the pavement, taking in the sights of the city all around them. “Let’s find us a hotel, shall we?”

As they strolled through the streets, both Éponine and Alexandre couldn’t help but be awed by the city, with all the fashionably dressed Parisians all around them and the remarkable buildings and landmarks they passed. Éponine ran up to a lamppost and twirled around it, laughing at the thrill she got from it as Alexandre watched her with a tiny smile on his face, and she went back to him and Grantaire, feeling incredibly out of place in her ratty oversized trench coat and newsboy cap. Well, they still had plenty of money left from selling the diamond—once they had checked into a hotel, they could afford to go shopping for clothes.

Alexandre was completely overwhelmed by the sights of the city, hardly able to believe that he was finally there and so close to finding who he was, finding that the city was better than he had ever imagined. He had dreamed of a majestic, booming city beyond all compare, and his hopes were getting higher by the moment. There was the Eiffel Tower looming in the distance, and as they strolled down the Seine, he caught sight of Notre-Dame. Grantaire had begun to ask around for a hotel, and about an hour later, someone had told them of an excellent hotel near the heart of the city they could check into.

Éponine and Alexandre stood in the grand lobby, awed by the chandeliers and the plush sofas they felt like they shouldn’t even touch, looking all around at the people coming and going as Grantaire took care of checking into the hotel. Éponine was bouncing on the balls of her feet, saying excitedly to Alexandre, “I’m going to sleep in a hotel! I’m going to take an actual _bath_ in a _bathtub_!”

Alexandre smiled at her excitement, hiding his mild bewilderment as she mentioned how she’d finally be able to take a proper bath. Grantaire soon made his way back to them with the keys to their rooms, wiggling his eyebrows gleefully as he invited, “Come on!”

Once they were all settled in, their luggage in their respective rooms, they went out into the city with the money they had left in a search for new clothes. They felt extremely out of place in their dirty clothing among the impeccably dressed Parisians, and Éponine could feel many pairs of eyes on her, Alexandre, and Grantaire as they made their way down the street.

“We have to find new clothes,” Éponine told them both briskly, taking what was left of their money out of her pocket and splitting it evenly between them. “I’ll meet you at the tower soon! Be quick!”

Two hours later, Éponine looked completely different as she waited for Alexandre and Grantaire to return from their spontaneous shopping trip, pacing back and forth on the pavement before the Eiffel Tower. Dusk was rapidly falling upon them, and she was now dressed in a fitted blue suit jacket with a button-up shirt underneath and a matching knee-length pencil skirt, her ratty old work boots having been traded for blue pumps. She had gotten her hair done, too, and it was now in a gorgeous updo that actually showed her face. Lost in thought, she paced back and forth, thinking about what was going to happen with Alexandre. If asked, she would deny it, but he had grown on her, and now that Paris held the key to his past and they didn’t have much longer to wait, she knew they’d have to part ways sooner or later. She didn’t know why the mere thought of parting ways with him made her heart break. _You’re here for the money, Éponine!_ she reminded herself harshly. _You don’t need your heart getting in the way! Maybe if you stopped thinking about kissing him every time he so much as looks at you, you’d get that reward!_

“Éponine!” The sound of Alexandre’s voice brought her back to earth, and she turned to see him and Grantaire approaching her. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of him looking all dapper in his burgundy suit, and she knew the look on her face gave everything away, if the smug smirk on Grantaire’s face was anything to go by. Alexandre ran up to her, a huge smile lighting up his handsome face, as Grantaire came up behind them. _He cleans up nicely,_ Éponine thought in a bit of a daze as she grinned up at Alexandre while trying to ignore how ridiculously fast her heart was beating.

“You look… great,” she complimented him softly, smiling up at him as she took his hands in hers.

Alexandre chuckled, turning faintly pink as he replied, “So do you.”

They merely smiled and gazed at each other for a few moments before Grantaire cleared his throat behind them, saying with a teasing edge to his tone, “Break it up, lovebirds. Let’s go up the tower!”

The three of them soon found themselves in an elevator on the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and it must have been a special occasion that day, for they saw fireworks go off that evening as they walked around the top of the tower, amazed by the view. “You can see the whole city from up here!” Éponine exclaimed in awe, a smile creeping onto her face as she gazed out upon the city, her hands gripping the railing.

Alexandre laughed and put a hand over hers, a habit he didn’t seem to realise he had picked up. “I love France.”

“We’re getting close,” Éponine told him, turning her head to grin up at him. “We just need to convince that Jehan guy Grantaire is always talking about.”

Alexandre laughed once more, thinking about how _close_ he was to finding out who he was. He wondered if he truly was Prince Enjolras, and if he was… well, then he’ll go from there.

Grantaire, who was standing alone to the side as he looked over the edge with fond thoughts of Jehan filling his head, stole a glance at Éponine and Alexandre and smiled knowingly to himself. The two of them had gotten considerably friendlier of the course of their trek through Europe, and at this point, Grantaire was absolutely convinced that there were stronger feelings at work. The way they looked at each other… He brushed it off, his mind wandering back to thoughts of his Jehan instead, eager to see him again.

As night fell upon them, the trio explored the city for quite some time before coming to a stop at the Pont Alexandre III. “It’s your bridge, Alexandre,” Éponine joked, patting his arm. He rolled his eyes in amusement at her little comment.

The three of them stood at the edge of the bridge, gazing out at the sparkling water, and Éponine soon stretched out her arms and yawned, declaring, “Well, it’s been a long day! I better get back to the hotel.”

“Don’t use all the hot water!” Grantaire shouted after her as she began to walk off, and he stepped up to stand next to Alexandre as they watched Éponine walk away. “I’ve never seen her this happy,” Grantaire confided quietly, observing how Éponine had a bit of a spring in her step as she faded from view. He noticed how Alexandre was staring after Éponine’s disappearing figure with a peculiar look in his blue eyes, but he said nothing of it. “Well, I should be going too. I’m going to stop at the Neva Club.” With that, he left too, leaving Alexandre alone at the bridge.

As he stared at the opulent sculptures adorning the bridge, Alexandre slowly began to cross it, dragging his feet along and dragging his hand across the railing. Vague memories were coming back to him—he never expected he’d be alone, crossing this bridge. He was getting closer to finding out who he was, to finding out if he really was Prince Enjolras, and he thought he heard somebody calling in the distance. A beautiful river, a bridge by a square… He was at the halfway point between wondering why and finally knowing, and he could only hope he would finally know soon.

He could be sharing this beautiful night with someone he could barely recall from his dreams, with him on the left bank and that someone on the right. Thousands of lights reflected off the sparkling water, and once he was at the middle of the bridge, he gazed out at the River Seine, at the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Every light felt like a promise; every light could provide a clue. He wondered what he would find out.

_One of them might be you._

* * *

“Not now, Count Theodule!” Jehan Prouvaire repeated in exasperation, ignoring the man trailing behind him as he walked back into the parlour of the former tsar’s magnificent home. It usually took a lot to exasperate the gentle, patient Jehan, but by God, Count Theodule was absolutely insufferable.

“The old tsar can’t always be resting!” Count Theodule retorted, following the young man of twenty-six years into the parlour. “He knows I have important papers for him to sign!”

Jehan turned back to give the count a look and raised his eyebrow, thinking up a smart response on the spot. “Papers designating you the heir of the Valjean fortune?” When Count Theodule spluttered in outrage, Jehan merely laughed and told him, “He’ll never sign them.”

“He’s an old man who has outlived his place in history,” the count bit back as Jehan took a seat in his favourite armchair by the fireplace, opening one of the latest letters that had come in. “Enjolras is a pathetic figment of his imagination! Eventually I’ll be recognised as the sole beneficiary of the tsar’s estate by _international court of law_!”

Jehan had just gotten up and begun to walk away again before stopping in his tracks and turning around to face Count Theodule. “I’ll tell His Majesty you called,” Jehan told the other man sweetly, gesturing towards the door and making it clear that he should be going.

“Will you be at the Neva Club this evening, Monsieur?” Count Theodule questioned.

“Oh, I’ll just be hanging around,” Jehan replied airily, waving him away. “Observing every other Russian in Paris like I always do.”

“Will you be in costume?” Count Theodule drawled, his tone taking a sly turn as he looked the attractive young redhead up and down.

Jehan pursed his lips and replied shortly, “I’m giving up dancing for Lent. Besides, it’s not like I dance that often.”

“But Lent just ended,” Count Theodule was swift to point out. Jehan occasionally did dance, but most nights, he sat at a table in a corner to watch the others, nostalgic for the old days of Imperial Russia.

“Next Lent,” Jehan informed him. “I’m getting an early start.” With that, he told Count Theodule to get out, and once the obnoxious count was gone, an elderly Valjean walked into the parlour as Jehan was reading one of the letters.

“Is he gone?” the voice of the old tsar asked in disdain, and Jehan turned around and bowed.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” he greeted, smiling.

“He’s like a dog with a bone, that one,” Valjean remarked contemptuously, using his cane to make his way to his favourite armchair by the fire. The past ten years hadn’t been kind to him—what with the murder of everyone he loved, the rumours that followed of his favourite grandson’s survival, and all the impostors that soon followed. He had found solace in his bitterness and despair.

“Only four letters today!” Jehan offered, running up to his elder with the letters in hand and waiting to see how the old man would react. Valjean sighed and leaned back in his seat, growing more and more bitter by the day.

“If only I could lose hope entirely,” he lamented, mostly to himself, as Jehan knelt down beside him in front of the fire. The old man recalled how he used to open each letter with a pounding heart, wondering if this one would be his beloved Enjolras, only to be sorely disappointed, letter after letter after letter. “I’ve come to dread each letter. It’s always just another impostor,” the old tsar muttered bitterly, staring into the fire.

“I won’t let you give up, Your Majesty,” Jehan promised, eager to prove himself. He still remembered interacting with the brothers when he had been a teenager, before that fateful coup that destroyed their lives.

“Oh, dear Jehan.” The old man ruffled the young count’s ginger hair, wishing it was Enjolras’ hair he could be ruffling. “I know I’m old and difficult. You’re the only one who’s allowed to see what’s become of me! I was Jean Valjean, Emperor of All Russia. You can’t imagine what that means, Jehan.” He paused to take a deep breath, muttering, “No one can.”

Jehan opened one of the letters and began to read it, sticking it out for the old man to see. “‘Your Majesty, I remember our happy summers by the sea in Livadiya’!”

“Livadiya?” Valjean took the letter from his young assistant and let out a scornful laugh. “He’s done his homework.”

“‘Strange and bizarre events have brought me to Buenos Aires’,” Jehan continued to read aloud for the old man. “‘Bring me to Paris and I will convince you I am Enjolras.’”

Rather outraged by this stranger’s audacity, Valjean exclaimed indignantly, “He wants _me_ to pay for him to come to France? At least that funny little impostor from Cleveland paid his own passage!” He snatched the paper from Jehan and crumpled it up, tossing it into the fire as he muttered, “What is Cleveland? I’ve never even heard of such a place! It sounds dreadful.”

Picking up another letter, Jehan began to read, “‘Dearest Grandpapa, I—”

“Grandpapa! I was never Grandpapa,” Valjean interrupted derisively, taking the letter and tossing that one into the fire as well. Sighing and rubbing his temple as he shook his head in defeat, he scoffed under his breath, “I was Grandpère! I was only ever Grandpère. _Grandpapa_. They think I’m a fool! Give me those letters.”

When Jehan did as he was told, Valjean crumpled them all up and disposed of them all in the fire, saying at last, “No more of these. No more interviews!”

“There will be other young men,” Jehan pointed out, desperately trying to be helpful. “What should I tell them?”

“Tell them they’re too late!” Valjean stated bitterly, sinking down further in his seat. “The Tsarevich Enjolras Valjean is dead, and the old tsar is dead with him. I’m closing the door. Now leave me.”

Jehan stood up and walked out, about to get dressed to go to the Neva Club. When he peeked back in the parlour, he could hear the muffled sobs of the old tsar, and quietly, so not to disturb the old man, Jehan slipped out the door.

Valjean stared into the fire, wondering what he had ever done to deserve this. These strangers came calling and were gone in an instant just when he had gotten his hopes up. All of these letters—none of them sounded like something Enjolras would write. Then again, he hasn’t seen Enjolras in twenty years. Who knows what might have happened in that time?

Where did summer go? Valjean ached for the summers spent with his family in Livadiya, for his grandchildren—children all in white, running down the sand to him. He remembered them all—their grinning faces were forever etched into the back of his mind. He remembered Combeferre’s protectiveness over his younger siblings, Feuilly’s adoration of art, Courfeyrac’s enthusiasm about anything good concerning his beloved siblings, Enjolras’ stubbornness whenever he had set his mind on something, and Cosette’s unconditional love towards her older brothers. Valjean didn’t want to believe that they were all dead now, but he can’t keep thinking this way.

Tears streamed down the old tsar’s cheeks as he recalled one memory of his grandchildren running around on board the Imperial yacht, laughing and singing together. Cosette had barely been able to keep up with her brothers, trying to catch up to them by running as fast as she could on her short legs, and so her brothers all went behind her and matched their pace to hers, jogging behind her and laughing at how funny it was to see her try to run. They had all obviously doted on their little sister, adoring her and doing what they could to make her feel included. They had all been dancing around in one big circle before they eventually fell down in a state of hysterical giggles, and Valjean distinctly remembered how Enjolras had caught sight of him and immediately got up, running up to embrace his grandfather.

He still remembered Enjolras’ smile—by God, he would do anything to see that smile again, even if it was only for one fleeting moment. He had believed for so long, daring to hope that the door might open and Enjolras might enter, but he had only been disappointed each time, growing more and more despairing with each impostor that found his way to Valjean. He so desperately wished that his beloved grandson would come running home to him, but the likelihood of that was decreasing with each passing day as various impostors continued to let him down.

Valjean recalled their summers spent in Livadiya, at Livadia Palace, and he remembered how he had watched as the children played hide and seek. Feuilly had been the best at finding his siblings in the shortest amount of time; Combeferre was always the last to be found whenever he hid, with Courfeyrac almost always being the first, and the memory of the sound of Cosette’s giggles whenever she hid in a place her brothers would never think to look was almost unbearable. Valjean had liked to sit by a window, smiling widely whenever his grandchildren approached him and peppered him with kisses on the cheek.

These rumours of Enjolras’ survival had managed to get his hopes up as he let himself believe that there was a chance his favourite grandson might still be alive. With each impostor that came by, however, he was beginning to lose that hope, wishing he could just stop believing that Enjolras would ever come running home to him.

With one final sigh, he wiped away his tears and stood up, making his way back up to his bedroom. He needed to stop dreaming and finally admit it—Enjolras was dead.

* * *

Things at the Neva Club were going on as usual—Russian aristocrats complained about how horrible their lives now were in between dances, and Jehan was observing them all, longing for his days as a young, fresh-faced boy of sixteen, the age he had experienced his first love. Unbeknownst to the other nobles, Jehan had had an illicit love affair with a boy who had only been a year older than he was—Grantaire. He still remembered him dearly, remembering how they had snuck around and laughed at the others’ cluelessness, and with each passing day, he wondered what became of him ever since the fall of the Russian empire. For all he knew, Grantaire may not even still be alive. _Please don’t let that be the case,_ Jehan thought to himself.

He remembered everything about his lover—his laughing green eyes, his curly black hair, his sarcastic tendencies, his love of wine… Grantaire had had artistic inclinations, liking to sketch what was going on around him, and he had loved to sketch Jehan most of all. Jehan still kept all of Grantaire’s sketches of him in a drawer in his room, locked away for only him to see. He frequently took them out to look at them, wondering if Grantaire still liked to sketch in his spare time. That is, if Grantaire was even alive.

Sighing in resignation, Jehan began to listen in on the clubgoers’ gossip, wondering what they were complaining about tonight.

“I used to have a _palace_!” one of them burst out, attracting Jehan’s attention. “Now here I have nothing but a flat! I barely managed to escape with some diamonds!”

“Well, the Russian empire has fallen,” another of the clubgoers pointed out wryly. “At least we’re not dead.”

“No, but we’re in France now,” a woman reminded him, raising her glass of wine. “Have you heard of the rumours?”

“What rumours?” a man asked, taking a swig of his wine. “The ones of Enjolras?”

“Those very rumours,” the woman confirmed, raising her hand and beckoning a waiter over. She seemed to order more wine before going on, “They say he might still be alive.”

A man snorted derisively, shaking his head. “Doubtful! All of the Valjeans were killed!”

“Well, the old tsar doesn’t seem to think so,” another woman commented, getting to her feet.

“He’s in denial, that one,” yet another woman agreed, rolling her eyes. Jehan had to resist the urge to loudly contradict them. “But who cares about that? Let’s dance!”

Jehan smiled to himself as he watched them all dance to lively music, not a care in the world, seeming to imagine they were all back in the good old days of the Russian empire, when he caught sight of a strangely familiar face. His breath caught in his throat. Could it be…?

He jumped when that same familiar face appeared right in front of him, slipping into the chair next to him with a grin on his face. Jehan stared at the person in amazement, asking uncertainly, “Grantaire…?”

“The one and only,” the man confirmed, his green eyes sparkling, smirking at the redhead and making his face grow hot. “Aren’t you happy to see me, love?”

Jehan laughed and pulled his former flame into a tight embrace, getting all teary-eyed as he whispered into Grantaire’s ear, “I thought you were dead!”

“Well, I’m not, so here I am,” Grantaire replied, pulling back and wiggling his eyebrows. “Alive and kicking.”

He was just about to lean in for a kiss before Jehan stopped him, whispering, “No. Not here.” When Grantaire gave him a look that clearly asked why, Jehan explained softly, “You know these people—they wouldn’t think kindly of our relationship, of people like us. They’re all still quite narrow-minded. Do you want to go outside?”

When Grantaire nodded, Jehan got up and managed to discreetly slip away from the club, Grantaire at his heels, and soon the pair were walking alone in the streets of Paris, wondering how it had all happened. Ten years had passed since their last meeting, and here they were now, reunited and acting as if the past ten years hadn’t happened. Could they really slip back into a relationship this easily?

“How did you get here?” Jehan asked in amazement as they made their way to a park he liked to frequent. “What are you doing in Paris?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?” Grantaire asked, following the redhead to a secluded part of the park and taking a seat on a bench underneath a cherry tree, seeming rather dismayed when Jehan shook his head no.

“It must have gotten lost in the mail,” Jehan murmured regretfully, taking Grantaire’s hand in his. “But no matter! You’re here now.” Jehan brought Grantaire’s hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the other man’s knuckles as he whispered, “I missed you, my love.”

He remembered everything so clearly—kisses shared in hidden corners, secrets whispered over the pillows late at night, the laughter they had both shared in one beautiful year… Grantaire had first seen him at court and was instantly fascinated by this teenage boy of sixteen years, and the two of them had become friends only for it to blossom into something more. All of Jehan’s fear and doubt from the last ten years had almost instantly vanished when he saw Grantaire at the Neva Club, alive and well.

“You never left my mind,” Grantaire confessed quietly, squeezing Jehan’s hand and letting his guard down as he had always done whenever he was around the spirited redhead. “All those years, I never forgot about you. I wondered what you came to be.”

“Oh, I was just fine,” Jehan assured his old lover, laughing. “I’m sure you’ve heard of how I’ve been appointed assistant to the old tsar. I’ve been spending the last year or so answering letters from Enjolras impostors.”

“Yeah, so about the prince—” Grantaire was cut off by Jehan pressing a finger to his lips, shushing him.

“The old tsar’s given up at last, I’m afraid,” Jehan told him sadly, surprised by Grantaire’s look of complete dejection. Did he perhaps know something? “He’s completely lost hope. He’s convinced that Enjolras is dead.”

“But what if he isn’t?” Grantaire pointed out, trying not to let desperation show in his tone. Would the old man just wave Alexandre away without even looking at him?

“There’s no convincing him anymore,” Jehan said solemnly, leaning back on the bench and staring up at the starry night sky. “He’s given up. There will be no more Enjolras impostors for him.”

Grantaire processed Jehan’s words and let out a long sigh, wondering if this was the end. He kissed Jehan’s hand softly, one long kiss and several short kisses all over the back of the other man’s hand, and Jehan chuckled softly at the feeling of those familiar lips on his hand and was soon pulling Grantaire into a proper kiss, gently pressing his lips to the other man’s and taking Grantaire’s breath away.

Once Jehan had pulled away, a faint red blush dusting his cheeks, he cupped Grantaire’s jaw, whispering, “Should we?”

“Yes, we should,” Grantaire responded without hesitation, leaning in for another kiss and thinking about how long he had longed to do this once again. Jehan sighed and threw his arms around Grantaire, fully melting into the kiss, feeling how utterly right Grantaire’s lips felt against his and not giving a damn about whatever the hell other people would think if they were to be discovered like this. Once they had broken apart, Grantaire murmured huskily, “There’s a young man I want you to meet.”

Jehan raised his eyebrows, curious. “Oh?”

“There’ll be someone at the ballet on Monday who will want to meet him too,” Grantaire continued, grinning and assuming a mysterious air as he pulled out two tickets to the ballet.

“And who would that be?” Jehan questioned with a teasing edge to his voice, his eyebrows practically disappearing into his hairline.

Grantaire leaned in and kissed Jehan’s nose, smirking as he answered, “The old tsar.”

Jehan let out a tiny gasp and laughed rather nervously. “Grantaire I’ve told you. The old tsar isn’t seeing any more impostors!”

“But this one may not be an impostor!” Grantaire tried to convince him. “Everything will make sense when you meet him, Jehan. Let’s get out of here for now.”

The ginger let Grantaire pull him up to his feet and link arms with him, and as they walked out of that park, Grantaire didn’t notice that he had dropped their tickets to the ballet. Montparnasse, who had just gotten off a train from Russia and had been hiding in the bushes, spying on them after following them from the Neva Club to the park, crept out once the coast was clear. _How could a good Russian boy be so badly led astray?_ he wondered, noticing the ballet tickets on the ground and kneeling to pick them up. He stared off into the distance where Grantaire and Jehan had gone, pocketing the tickets.

 _Well,_ Montparnasse thought, taking out his gun, _I’ll let you lead the way to Alexandre._


	8. Chapter VII - With the Sun in my Eyes, You Were Gone

Back at the hotel, Alexandre was tossing and turning in his bed, in the midst of another dream. He heard eerie voices echoing, and he was growing more and more unsettled by the moment as he found himself in a ballroom once again, only this time it seemed more sinister than comforting.

_Grandly dressed aristocrats were milling about the lavishly decorated ballroom, dancing to the music and conversing at the sides of the ballroom. Alexandre found himself dressed in sparkling white military-style attire as he whirled around on the spot, wondering how he had ended up here. When he turned once again, he let out an inaudible gasp at the sight of three boys and a girl—it was always those three boys and that girl—approaching him, unreadable expressions on their faces, the boys wearing military-style suits nearly identical to Alexandre’s and the girl wearing a pale pink ball gown with hanging sleeves and a small, simple crescent-shaped fabric kokoshnik headpiece adorned with pearls and secured with a pink ribbon. With them were a dark-haired man and a golden-haired woman, the woman in her heavy bejewelled gown and tall tiara and the man with his sharp military suit. Alexandre took a step back, rather disconcerted._

_“Who are you?” he asked, finding that his breathing was shallow. “Every night you come!”_

_The older man replied harshly, “And we will until you remember us!”_

_The three boys, all older than Alexandre, walked towards him and surrounded him, seeming to examine Alexandre. One was the curly-haired, dark-eyed boy he saw much more frequently in his dreams than almost anyone else, and another was a fair-haired boy who seemed by far the oldest. The third had dark curly hair as well, although his was trimmed shorter, and the girl had joined the boys in circling Alexandre. She had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as Alexandre did, and the three boys and the girl were all circling Alexandre in an oddly ominous sort of way._

_The woman in her magnificent ball gown walked up to Alexandre, asking him sternly, “Have you said your prayers?”_

_Alexandre gulped—why should he have to have said his prayers? He was in a ballroom, at a ball, and something felt extremely wrong and out of place. It didn’t have the warm, comforting atmosphere as the other balls he felt like he had been to. He looked around—he realised that all the guests had blank expressions on their faces, looking lost and dazed, and he took a deep breath, telling himself to calm down._

_“God is everything,” the woman told him severely. “Sleep well.”_

_The blonde-haired girl was then by Alexandre’s side, and she had pulled him aside, a pretty smile on her face that made Alexandre feel uneasy. She let out a high-pitched giggle, only unsettling Alexandre even more. “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked, her sweet, pure voice making it all the more disturbing as she went on, “I’m going to die soon. We all are. Do you have a secret?”_

_“I—I don’t know who I am,” Alexandre stammered out, unnerved by the innocent way this young girl was saying such dreadful things. He looked around, seeing soldiers with guns marching in the distance through the window. Nobody in the ballroom seemed to notice._

_“That’s silly!” the girl giggled, tugging at Alexandre’s sleeve. “Everyone knows who they are!”_

_She ran back to the three boys, clinging to the oldest boy, and then a scream and the sound of breaking glass rang out through the ballroom. They all turned towards the sound and Alexandre’s heart plummeted. He looked at the boys and the girl—they all seemed to be frozen in fear. Just then another scream rang out through the room._

_Followed by gunfire._

“No!” Alexandre, having been tossing and turning as he grew increasingly disturbed, finally jolted awake, shouting, “No, no, no, no, _no_ —”

He had just fallen off the bed when Éponine came rushing in, dressed in nothing but a white form-fitting nightgown that didn’t leave much to the imagination, calling frantically, “Alexandre!”

She had just reached him and knelt beside him when he said all in one breath, “The voices keep coming back.” He stood up and quickly backed away from Éponine as she rushed towards him, desperate to calm him.

“That’s all they are. Just voices,” she attempted to reassure him, placing her hands on either one of his biceps to still him. He was wearing nothing but pyjama pants and a tight tank top that showed off his remarkably muscular arms, but Éponine didn’t think about that, telling him softly, “It was just a nightmare, Alexandre.”

He stared at her for a few moments, gripping her forearms and feeling sweat dripping down his brow, and he whispered, “Stay with me, Éponine.”

She complied, gently guiding him back towards the bed and making him sit back down. He was trembling slightly, shaken by his nightmare, and Éponine took his hand in hers and began to rub circles into his palm. She had never seen him in such a vulnerable, frightened state before. That nightmare must have been really awful if it had left him in such a state.

“Is that better?” she asked quietly, worried for the young man. She had been roused by the sound of his shouts next door, and without a second thought, she had rushed in just when he fell off the bed.

“Who do you think I am, Éponine?” Alexandre asked, sounding, for the first time since Éponine had met him, rather hopeless and despairing.

“If I were the old tsar,” Éponine told him in a desperate attempt to calm him down, “I’d want you to be Enjolras.”

Alexandre stilled, murmuring quietly, “You would?”

“I would want him to be a handsome, strong, intelligent young man,” Éponine continued as Alexandre scooted away ever so slightly, a doubtful, slightly suspicious look in his blue eyes. She was saying that as if she were the old emperor, but did she believe it herself?

“Is that who you think I am?” he asked, coming off as slightly harsh. Caught off-guard by the severity in his tone, Éponine hesitated for a moment, uncertain how to respond.

At long last, she broke the silence between them. “I do.”

Alexandre stared disbelievingly into Éponine’s eyes, holding her gaze, until he murmured, “Thank you.”

Éponine let go of his hand and scooted away, leaving some space between them as she awkwardly replied, “You’re welcome.”

“I was wondering if you were ever going to pay me a compliment.” Éponine was relieved to hear that Alexandre seemed back to normal, and quite affronted at the comment he had made to indicate that.

“I’ve complimented you before!” she protested, scowling at him, only to find that he was looking as if he was trying to suppress a grin. The scowl slowly faded from her face when she realised that he had only been teasing her, and she promptly socked him in the arm, albeit lightly. “Little shit.”

Alexandre was quiet for a few more moments before turning to look back at Éponine, questioning, “Do you really think I might be him?”

She fell silent as she considered what to say, and she soon told him quietly, “I want to believe you’re the boy I saw once all those years ago.”

Caught off-guard by her reply, Alexandre drew back slightly, his brow furrowing. “I—I don’t understand.”

Éponine smiled dolefully. “It was June,” she began her tale, folding her hands in her lap. “I was eight. I still think of that day every so often. A parade and a boy, and this huge crowd. I nearly got lost in that crowd of thousands.” She chuckled to herself, vividly remembering that day.

She had been this little eight-year-old girl, still grieving over the deaths of her siblings that past winter, and she had gone to a parade at which the Valjeans were present in an attempt to ease the pain. It had been a hot, cloudless day, the sun beating down mercilessly upon them, and she had had her newsboy cap to shield her face from the sun. She distinctly remembered the cheers of the people, the Valjeans hidden from view, and in her eagerness to see them, she had dodged between the crowds to get to the front of the lines, gazing in awe at the carriage passing by with the imperial family on it.

Interested, Alexandre scooted closer to her. “Tell me more about it.”

“He was sitting straight and tall in that carriage with his family,” Éponine continued softly, staring off into space with a vaguely dreamy look in her dark eyes. She remembered how Prince Enjolras had been all dressed in military-style attire, his brothers wearing similar clothing while his young sister had been in a beautiful white gown, and all five of them had been sitting in the carriage with their heads held high in pride, waving at the crowds. Éponine remembered how Prince Enjolras’ blue eyes had sparkled, light catching in those golden curls of his, and she still remembered his face to this day—his striking resemblance to Alexandre really was uncanny. “He was only ten, but oh, he was so proud. Everyone was cheering while I just stared, completely entranced, and then I started to run.”

Éponine remembered this part most vividly—she had run past the crowds and the guards, calling out the youngest prince’s name as the crowds went wild behind her. She had run through the near-scorching heat, the sun beating down upon them as she ran as fast as her short little legs could take her, desperately trying to catch up to the carriage as she shouted out Prince Enjolras’ name. Once she had finally caught up with the carriage, she reached out with her hand and looked up, seeing how Prince Enjolras’ lips had twitched before he gave in and smiled, giving her a little wave, his blue eyes alight with happiness and the sunlight bouncing off his golden curls.

“I started to run, calling out his name,” Éponine continued, looking Alexandre in the eye and thinking again about how much he resembled the lost tsarevich of Russia. He had a soft smile on his face that she found herself reciprocating as she went on, “I was small and I managed to dodge between the guards as I tried to catch up to the carriage, and when I finally did, I reached out with my hand and looked up.” Éponine laughed softly at the thought of the prince, thinking about how enraptured she had been with him that day as she told Alexandre, “Then he smiled.”

Prince Enjolras had actually smiled at her, a dirty little nobody, a street rat. She had been blinded by the sunlight and he was gone in one instant, the parade travelling on and on. “The parade seemed to go on forever,” Éponine recalled fondly, reminiscing that day. “The sun was in my eyes, and then he was—gone. Just like that. If I were still eight, though, I know I’d find him again.” She leaned back on her hands—that had been one of her fondest childhood memories. She still thought about it often.

“You’re making me feel like I was there, too,” Alexandre told her softly, catching her eye.

Éponine laughed. “Maybe you were! Make it part of your story.”

Alexandre’s brow furrowed as he attempted to come up with something, building off of Éponine’s story. “There was a parade passing by,” he tried, and Éponine nodded along, encouraging him to continue. “It was hot, the sky completely cloudless, and then a girl caught my eye in a crowd of thousands. She was skinny; not too clean, either—”

“Hey!” Éponine lightly punched Alexandre in the shoulder, pretending to be offended, although the grin on her face gave it away. Alexandre chuckled, gazing at her with a strange look in his blue eyes.

“She dodged between the guards,” Alexandre went on, beginning to remember bits and pieces of something that strongly resembled the scene Éponine had described. All of a sudden, he was ten years old and found himself in a carriage, dressed in navy blue military-style attire with the sun beating down harshly upon them. The blue, blue skies stretched out endlessly, as did the crowds, all cheering and shouting for the imperial family, and the children had waved elegantly from the carriage. Just then, Alexandre saw a small girl in the distance, a girl who was dodging between guards and seeming to be attempting to run up to the carriage, and his breath nearly caught in his throat. “She really made herself seen.”

“Damn right I did,” Éponine replied, smiling.

“And then she started to run, calling out my name,” Alexandre continued, recalling more and more from his long-forgotten past as he stood up, his blue eyes widening. Éponine stared at him curiously as he made his way over to the window, staring at the lights of the city in that dark night. “In that heat and in that crowd, she was running, calling for me. I tried not to smile, but I did, and then…” He stopped short, his blue eyes widening as a vivid scene flashed through his mind—he was sitting in that carriage with his brothers and sister, waving graciously at the commoners as the carriage led the whole parade. His sister’s blue eyes were shining merrily, and his brothers were trying to suppress smiles as they all waved towards the people below. Then there was that small girl in the newsboy cap he had noticed earlier—she had managed to get past the guards and was trying to catch up to the carriage, reaching out with her hand. When she had finally caught up to the carriage, she had looked up directly at him, her dark eyes shining with wonder, and no matter how hard he tried, he hadn’t managed to suppress a smile, and he gasped upon remembering how the girl had curtsied as elegantly as possible to him. Alexandre turned around to face her, his blue eyes widening in shock. “She bowed.”

Éponine stood up, her dark eyes growing wide at the look of shock on Alexandre’s face. “I didn’t tell you that!” she exclaimed, not daring to believe it. Could it be…?

“You didn’t have to,” Alexandre replied, completely shocked. Was it possible that they shared a childhood memory? “I remember!”

Éponine took one tentative step towards him, whispering, “You _remember_?”

Alexandre nodded in confirmation, all of the memories of that day rushing back to him. He had been sitting fully dressed with his brothers and sister and parents in that hot summer heat, and the parade hadn’t stopped for one little girl who had curtsied to the youngest prince, so with the sun in his eyes, he had soon lost sight of the girl he now knew had been Éponine. He rushed towards her, grabbing her hands in his as they gazed into each other’s eyes in stunned silence upon the realisation that they shared a childhood memory.

This meant he really was Prince Enjolras.

Éponine gazed up into Alexandre’s eyes, her expression a mixture of shock, elation, and strangely enough, heartache, and Alexandre thought about how beautiful she looked that night, with her big, shining dark eyes, her thick dark hair cascading down her shoulders, that sleeveless form-fitting nightgown of hers that displayed her curves, and the amazed look on her face as they both realised that their shared childhood memory meant he really was the lost prince. Unthinkingly, he cupped her jaw with his large hand, beginning to lean in as his blue eyes slowly fluttered shut.

Her dark eyes widened in surprise, frozen in place before she began to lean in too, seeing how his eyes slowly closed, and just before their lips could make contact, she suddenly remembered that _Alexandre really was Prince Enjolras_ and that she wasn’t supposed to be doing this, causing her to back away before he could kiss her. His eyes opened and he stared at her in confusion when he kissed thin air, and Éponine had a resigned, broken-hearted look on her face as she merely curtsied, saying quietly, “Your Highness.”

* * *

Éponine stood by as Grantaire paced back and forth, wondering where Alexandre was. “So he really is the prince?” he asked in disbelief.

“ _Yes_ ,” Éponine repeated, having told him that a million times already. They were waiting about in the grand foyer of the Palais Garnier, waiting for a performance of Swan Lake, and Éponine had gone out and gotten herself a gorgeous blue dress that Grantaire had complimented her on once he saw her in it. He, on the other hand, was dressed quite handsomely in a cravat, dress tailcoat, matching pants, and dress shoes, a flower tucked into his lapel, and they were waiting impatiently in the foyer for Alexandre to appear.

Éponine looked around herself, awed by her surroundings—the glowing chandeliers, the intricately painted ceiling, the golden columns… She felt so small in that enormous foyer, gazing up at the ceiling and the chandeliers. She and Grantaire were standing near a column when they caught sight of the old tsar Valjean and Jehan coming up the grand staircase in the distance.

“There they are,” Grantaire whispered to Éponine, who readjusted her long white opera gloves out of sheer nerves. “Do you think he’ll believe us?”

“They’ve got to,” Éponine murmured, a whirlwind of emotions stirring up within her. She had absolutely no idea why she was feeling so lost and heartbroken now that she knew for sure that Alexandre was the lost prince. “He really is Prince Enjolras, R. Even the old tsar can’t deny that.”

Across the foyer, Jehan caught Grantaire’s eye, and the two of them exchanged a meaningful look before Grantaire turned away to look back at Éponine just as Alexandre finally showed up, dressed to the nines in a full black dress tailcoat, a blue bow tie, and sleek black shoes, a rose tucked into his lapel. Éponine’s breath caught in her throat upon catching sight of him, noticing how his bow tie matched her dress, and he walked up to her and smiled. She saw that his golden curls had been left as they were; it seemed like Alexandre liked it that way.

“You look beautiful,” he told her sincerely, offering her his arm to take. Éponine felt her cheeks burn red.

“You look quite handsome yourself,” she managed to reply, biting back a smile when he turned faintly pink as she took his arm. The two of them entered the theatre together, Éponine on Alexandre’s arm, and Grantaire quickly interpreted their body language and came to the conclusion that they had fallen in love, if both Éponine and Alexandre’s actions in the past few days had been any indication. Éponine seemed to be less snarky and quick to retort in the past few days, seeming more subdued and low-spirited, which wasn’t quite like her. Grantaire realised that it was because she was in love with Alexandre, who really was the prince, according to Éponine herself.

 _What’s meant to be is meant to be,_ Grantaire told himself, staring rather pensively after Éponine and Alexandre—Prince Enjolras—as they disappeared into the theatre. Alexandre was born to take this chance. Grantaire realised how they could never be together once Valjean accepted Alexandre as Enjolras, and it broke Grantaire’s heart all the more when he thought about how crushed Éponine would be. He had tried to think of _everything_ —he just forgot romance, and he felt like kicking himself for letting things get this way. Éponine wasn’t normally one to develop feelings for someone, but something seemed to have happened between her and Alexandre, and Grantaire knew that no matter how many times she would try to deny it, she would be devastated at the idea of never being able to see Alexandre again. His sympathy and sadness for his friend increasing with each passing moment, Grantaire thought in despair, _I never should have let them dance._

He soon joined Éponine and Alexandre in the theatre, taking his seat beside them in their box just as the curtain rose, the performance commencing. Alexandre was crumpling and uncrumpling his programme in his lap out of nerves, eventually ripping it up into little pieces as he kept looking back and forth between the stage and the box across the theatre from theirs, looking at Valjean and Jehan and thinking about how close he was to everything he had ever wanted. This could be the evening, the place where everything would come to make sense again, and he stared at the old man across the theatre, hazy memories of his face flashing through Alexandre’s mind, his past and his future so near.

Éponine noticed how Alexandre was ripping up his programme into a hundred tiny pieces and took his hand in hers to calm him down, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand as she leaned over to whisper to him, “Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.” Alexandre nodded, looking more like he was trying to reassure himself than her that he was all right, but that didn’t stop him from thinking about every “what if” that ran through his mind.

Éponine found herself having a bit of a crisis as she attempted to figure out what on earth she was going to do once Valjean accepted Alexandre as Prince Enjolras, wondering what the hell had gotten into her. She shouldn’t be feeling this way! She had told herself numerous times that only bad things could come out of her developing feelings for Alexandre, but as always, she had defied her better judgement. She needed to stop feeling this way right now. She _needed_ that money. What she didn’t need was her damn heart getting in the way. She would only break it.

Across the theatre, Valjean noticed Alexandre sitting between a pretty young woman in a blue dress and another man, and his heart nearly skipped a beat. The golden-haired man smiled at one of the scenes in the ballet and Valjean could have sworn that that smile was a carbon copy of his dear Enjolras’. _Could it be…?_ The strange man seemed to display many of Enjolras’ mannerisms, from not quite being able to sit still to stealing glances all around him as if he wasn’t entertained enough. Valjean shook his head, refusing to believe it despite how much that golden-haired man looked exactly like his long-lost grandson. _No. I mustn’t think this way. I need to stop believing that I’ll ever find him._ As much as it broke his heart to admit it to himself, he couldn’t keep living in denial for any longer. _Enjolras is dead._

Unbeknownst to Éponine, Alexandre, and Grantaire, Montparnasse had followed them all the way to Paris and to the ballet, and right now, he was sitting in another box, his eyes fixed on Alexandre. For some inexplicable reason, he found himself feeling jealous of that little con artist beside the golden-haired man, wishing he could be sitting beside Alexandre. _No!_ Montparnasse scolded himself furiously. He cannot be feeling this way! His heart and his mind shouldn’t be at war; he had to put duty before morals. He knew he had to kill this young man and get the job done for his father, but he wasn’t so sure now that his heart was obviously against the thought of shooting this young man. He mustn’t think like that—he had to be cold and ruthless, he had to be able to kill him without any feelings of remorse, and yet…

Éponine kept stealing fleeting glances at Alexandre, not even caring that Grantaire seemed to have begun to notice, and she began to wonder if she had actually developed feelings for this young man she had grown to care for. Despite all of their conflicts and arguments in the past several months, she could never forget how he had almost kissed her that night before she backed away, and now that she knew for sure he was the long-lost prince, she knew that they could never be together, and it only broke her heart even more as she went back to watching the ballet, refusing to think about it any longer.

Grantaire had been right. It seemed Alexandre would end up breaking Éponine’s heart after all.

As the ballet came to an end, Éponine glanced once more at Alexandre, whatever was left of her heart shattering into a million pieces.

* * *

“The finest, driest champagne they have? Yes, Your Majesty, of course!”

Once again they were all in the grand foyer, and Jehan had been asking Valjean about what drink he would like to get before trudging off, promptly running into Grantaire, who asked urgently, “Was he in a good mood?”

Jehan gave his lover a wry smile, replying somberly, “He’s never in a good mood. What have you talked me into, Grantaire?”

“Just wait until you see him!” Grantaire promised, and as if on cue, Éponine and Alexandre came walking up to them, Alexandre freezing in place when Jehan laid eyes on him.

“Your Grace.” He walked briskly over to the other man, asking, “May I see him?”

“I can’t get your hopes up, Monsieur,” Jehan replied ruefully, although he couldn’t help but be awed by the resemblance between this young man and the Enjolras he once knew. Their faces were _identical_ —a strong jawline, bright blue eyes, and the exact same golden curls. He even sounded the same; his voice was only a tad bit deeper, but he supposed that was what ten years did to a person. Jehan found himself thinking that maybe Grantaire hadn’t been wrong about this one.

“We’ll celebrate afterwards on the Pont Alexandre III,” Éponine piped up, gathering her skirts in her hand so she could walk comfortably. “ _Your_ bridge, Alexandre.” Now, the joke just sounded like a weak attempt to conceal the tornado of emotions whirling through her.

Alexandre took a deep breath, inhaling through his nose and exhaling through his mouth before he told Jehan confidently, “I’m ready.”

“The Tsarevich Enjolras Valjean!” Éponine announced, smiling through it all despite the unexplainable pain she was feeling inside.

Jehan took a deep breath and turned around, calling, “You have a visitor, Your Majesty!”

Éponine exhaled for what felt like the first time when Alexandre disappeared through a door with Jehan, and she bit her lip as she looked up anxiously at Grantaire. “I wonder what they’re saying,” she murmured to her best friend once a few moments had passed, twiddling her thumbs. She paced back and forth, constantly readjusting her opera gloves in a fit of nerves, wondering what they could be talking about behind closed doors. She wondered how long they would take to speak, feeling as if there was nothing left to do besides fret and pace back and forth, wringing her hands out of sheer nerves. Why was she panicking? She knew Alexandre was Prince Enjolras, and now all she had to do was wait until he walked back in.

“How long do you think they’ll be?” she asked Grantaire, taking her opera gloves off and beginning to fidget with them, unable to stand still due to how nervous she was. She couldn’t help but think about how proud she would be if they managed to pull this off—Alexandre would get his family and Éponine would get rich, and then they’d go their separate ways. They’ve said this was goodbye, so why was she feeling so upset about it?

“Oh, why am I worrying?” she wondered aloud, mostly to herself, stopping right in front of Grantaire, who had taken a seat by a tall column. “Worrying’s not like me. This is madness, I shouldn’t be—”

“Éponine.” She was cut off by Grantaire, who was looking at her with a strange,  oddly pitying look in his green eyes. If she didn’t know any better, she might have thought that it looked like he was tearing up. She raised an eyebrow, stopping in her tracks for once as she looked at him, awaiting an answer and wondering what on earth he was going to say.

Grantaire took a deep breath, asking her, “Do you love him?”

His blunt question startled Éponine into silence, and she stared down at him, finding that she was, for the first time, unable to come up with a cutting retort. “I—I—” She was at a loss for words, merely staring at Grantaire with a look of absolute shock in her eyes as he got to his feet, grabbing her arms and forcing her to look into his eyes.

“Éponine, do you love him?” Grantaire repeated softly, looking down at her expectantly.

She bit down on her lip, staying silent for several long moments before she gave a tiny nod.

There, she said it—well, not _said_ it, but she had admitted it nonetheless. She was in love with Alexandre, and she knew she wouldn’t get anything good out of being in love with him; it would only hurt her even more, since they could never be together. _No need to panic, Éponine,_ she told herself fiercely, trying to blink back the tears that were suddenly stinging her eyes. _You have everything to win! The boy gets his family back, you get your money, and the fairytale comes true. We can’t fail now._ She began to pace back and forth again, her skirts gathered in her hands, and she walked up to the door, trying to listen and hearing nothing but silence.

 _Oh, no. That can’t be good._ Éponine reassured herself that it was merely the thick door muffling all sound from the other side, telling herself, _No. Let’s assume it_ is _good._ Back and forth, back and forth, she paced until her feet hurt, and even then she still didn’t sit down, continuing to pace back and forth in her own little part of the foyer as she gazed up at the ceiling in a poor attempt to distract herself. She wondered if her and Alexandre’s paths would ever cross again, just like they had sixteen years ago at that parade. She tried to imagine what she would do if she never saw him again after this before scolding herself, telling herself that she shouldn’t be so upset about this—they had said this was goodbye, but then again, one never knew. She told herself that she should be glad she was finally breaking free, that both the con artist and the prince would get their wish. The one thing she hadn’t counted on was finding that he actually mattered to her.

Éponine began to think back to all those months she had spent with him—the heated arguments, the light-hearted banter, the long held gazes… She had grown to care for him over the course of the past several months, slowly began to see him as less of a thorn in her side and more of an actual companion—a friend. She found herself reminiscing their conversation on the train and then the attack before they all jumped out of the train. God, that had been terrifying. Her mind wandered to thoughts of the time they had spent that night before they left on the train, when they had encountered her old gang and he had revealed that he was quite good at self-defence before she proceeded to tell him of her life story and how he had spaced out when she gave him the music box. Then there was their little conversation on the top of the Eiffel Tower—he seemed to have developed a habit of placing his hand over hers. And then there was that night, the night they both realised he was the prince after finding out they shared a childhood memory—she would never be able to forget how goosebumps had erupted along her skin when he cupped her face and began to lean in before she stopped him from kissing her by stepping back. _It was the right thing to do,_ she convinced herself.

She _loved_ him. Dear God, somewhere along the way, she had fallen for him—she had fallen for this tall, handsome, snarky, stubborn golden-haired man, and he would probably never return those feelings. She didn’t deserve a happily ever after, and he would never love her back. Even if he did, they could never be together, especially now that she was absolutely certain he was Prince Enjolras. He had been born into a world of wealth and luxury, while she had been born a mere nobody, a street rat with nothing to her name.

Princes don’t marry street gamines.

Éponine pulled her gloves back on, telling herself, _I have everything to win. The only thing I lose…_ She stole one more glance at the door behind which she assumed Alexandre and Jehan stood with old Valjean, and she sighed, trying to discreetly wipe away the tears that had pooled in her eyes with her glove as she bit down on her quivering lip, stifling a nearly inaudible sob.

_The only thing I lose is you._


	9. Chapter VIII - Things my Heart Used to Know

Grantaire had just announced that he was leaving to get some wine to calm his nerves, and Éponine was still pacing the room when Alexandre came back into the foyer. She rushed up to him as quick as she could, her dark eyes alight as she asked, “So how did it go?”

“He wouldn’t even look at me,” Alexandre spat, his unexpectedly bitter tone of voice catching Éponine by surprise, and she took a step back, the excitement in her eyes slowly morphing into dismay. Alexandre’s face was resigned as he muttered, “He said, ‘This is just another impostor, Jehan. I know his kind too well. All he wants is money and he’d break an old man’s heart to get it.’”

Éponine was taken aback by the animosity in his voice, and she managed to choke out, “I—I’ll tell him the truth!” She was just about to run into the room Alexandre had just exited when he grabbed her by the wrist, pulling her back.

“That I was a pawn in that scheme of yours?” His frigid, hurt tone made Éponine’s blood run cold, and she stepped back to stare up at Alexandre, her eyes widening, aghast as he continued, “That you made me think I was someone I never was and never could be?” He paused to take a deep, shaky breath, trying to calm his nerves. He eventually looked her in the eye, nothing but contempt in those piercing blue eyes of his, making Éponine feel uneasy for the first time around him. “I was cold and hungry and _desperate_ when I met you, Éponine, but I was not dishonest.” He let go of her arm and began to stomp off, pausing only to look back and spit angrily at her, “I hate you for that.”

Feeling as if her lungs had been robbed of oxygen, Éponine stared after Alexandre’s disappearing figure with tears in her eyes and turned to see the old tsar exiting the room Alexandre had come out of, getting ready to leave. She was just trying to process everything when Valjean suddenly addressed her, asking coldly, “Excuse me, young lady, is he gone?” He didn’t even spare her a look before he continued to walk away until Éponine ran up to block his path, her skirt gathered in her hands.

“Your Imperial Majesty—!” Éponine was cut off by the bitter old man, and mid-curtsy, she heard him speak.

“How dare you address me?!” he bellowed, glaring at her with fire in his eyes.

“Alexandre doesn’t want your money!” Éponine desperately tried to explain, struggling to block the old man’s path due to how small she was. When Valjean didn’t even try to listen, she tried again, her tone growing more frantic with each word she spoke. “I take full responsibility for bringing him to Paris! I truly believe he is the tsarevich!”

“I will not stay for this!” Valjean managed to force Éponine out of his way and began to walk off, his head held high as he neared the grand staircase, just about to make his way down when Éponine ran back up to him, desperate to tell him everything and willing to do whatever it took to get him to listen.

“He only wants what’s rightfully his—your recognition and your love!” she yelled out, running up and grabbing Valjean by his coattails, stopping him in his tracks. The old man turned around, a look of absolute fury in his eyes as he towered over her, glaring down at this impertinent young woman. She continued hotly, “Just imagine how his life has been since his brothers, little sister, and parents were _murdered_!”

“I do not need reminding of what happened to my family!” Valjean thundered, his bitterness getting the best of him, angry tears filling his eyes as he shouted, “I lost everything I loved that day!”

“So did he!” Éponine shot back, managing not to flinch when the old man glared at her with such pure, unadulterated outrage in his eyes, she felt as if he was trying to kill her with a single look. Her voice growing shrill, she shouted, “Alexandre survived for a reason. He survived so he could heal what happened! Otherwise Russia will be a wound that never heals!”

Just then she felt her cheek painfully stinging and stumbled back, her hand flying to her face as she glared up at Valjean with tears pooling in her eyes. The old man had slapped her. She glared up at him in angered disbelief at how he had actually slapped her as he told her harshly, “That’s no longer a concern of mine. Russia has damned itself for eternity!”

“You’re tiring him!” Jehan exclaimed from behind Éponine, and the ginger-haired man caught up to them at the top of the grand staircase, rushing to break apart whatever conflict was going on between Éponine and the old tsar.

Éponine glared up at Valjean, tenderly rubbing her cheek as she spat out, “God will judge you harshly, old man.” She resisted the urge to spit in his face as she finished bitingly, “History already has.” With that, she gathered her skirts in her hands and ran down the stairs, leaving the old man with Jehan.

Jehan stared after Éponine incredulously. “She turned her back on you!” Jehan exclaimed, sounding more surprised than indignant, waiting to see what Valjean would do next. The old man turned around, fuming.

“Take me home, Jehan,” he ordered icily, beginning to make his way down the staircase with his cane in his hand. Jehan trailed after him, wondering what was going to happen next.

* * *

“It was my life you played with.” Back in his hotel room, Alexandre was packing up a bag for himself, filling it to the brim with his belongings as Éponine, still in her blue dress, looked on with Grantaire sitting by her side on the bed. Outside, the night was dragging on; inside, things were strewn pell-mell all across the lavish room, Alexandre having been hasty in packing up, and his tone was resentful as he spat out, “Telling me I was someone else and letting me believe I was.” He picked up a red watch box off the bed and opened it to reveal a handsome gold watch, asking bitingly, “What is _this_?”

“I bought it for you while we were—” Éponine was soon cut off by a furious Alexandre.

“I don’t want it,” he interrupted curtly, picking up his bag and beginning to march towards the chest of drawers at the other end of the room, feeling angry, bitter, and betrayed. All those months had been a lie, and it turned out that he had merely been a pawn in a deceitful scheme.

Éponine let out an exasperated sigh, rather fed up with Alexandre. Was he still angry? “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere that’s far from you,” Alexandre retorted cuttingly, throwing open a drawer. Éponine could practically feel her heart break a little more with each word he spoke.

Grantaire got up, approaching Alexandre in a desperate attempt to make him see reason. “Alexandre—” The golden-haired man turned around, absolute fury in his blue eyes.

“No wonder you were dismissed from court,” Alexandre told him bitterly, glaring at the other man. “People like you deserve everything awful that’s coming for them. You do!” Alexandre grabbed a brooch off of Grantaire’s tailcoat and threw it to the floor in an unsuccessful attempt to break it. He glared at the brooch on the floor before looking back at Grantaire and over his shoulder to glare at Éponine. “You both do!”

Alexandre turned around again and began to toss things into his bag from the drawer—his books, his clothing, the music box Éponine had given him, _everything_ he had brought along, saying heatedly, “I admire the way you were proud of who you were, Éponine, despite your circumstances. You taught me to be the same, but the whole time, you were tricking me.” It hurt even more to think about how all those months they had spent together had been based on a complete lie, and he closed his bag, beginning to make his way towards the door as he declared loudly, “Russian history! Save it for the next time—” He had just turned around only to find the old tsar Valjean himself there in the room—the others had left, how fitting, it was just like them to do so—and he quickly backtracked, letting his bag drop to the floor as he greeted meekly, “Your Imperial Majesty.”

Valjean looked this young man up and down, rather stunned by how much he resembled his treasured grandson Enjolras, and he told Alexandre unkindly, “I think history demands we play this _game_ to the end.”

Alexandre immediately regained his composure and rushed to brush any debris off the stool beside the chest of drawers before approaching Valjean. “Please, be seated—”

“There’s no need,” Valjean interrupted, his tone severe. Alexandre stiffened, intimidated by the old tsar as Valjean closely examined him, stepping closer. He asked, “Who are you?”

Alexandre hesitated, stepping closer to the old man as he began to say shakily, “I’m the youngest son of—”

“Oh, spare me my family history!” Valjean snapped, standing before the bed and facing Alexandre. He noticed how Alexandre was drumming his fingers against his thigh like Enjolras used to do, but Valjean convinced himself it was a mere coincidence. “It’s in every bookstore along the Seine. Anyone can read it.”

Alexandre looked down at his feet, hazy memories of a kind old man coming back to him. “I didn’t think you’d be so cruel,” he muttered, making sure Valjean heard him. The old man narrowed his eyes at this young man’s impudence.

“I’m old and impatient,” he replied sharply. “Kindness has become a luxury.”

More memories were resurfacing in Alexandre’s mind, and he remembered a kind old man who loved him unconditionally, always making time to spend time with him. The old man had doted on him and his siblings, spending summers with them in Livadiya. A brief look of surprise crossed Alexandre’s face when he realised he had actually remembered the name of a specific location instead of just what it looked like. “My Grandpère was the most loving man imaginable,” he told Valjean, taking one more tentative step towards the old man.

Valjean was still unwilling to believe what his mind was telling him. It’s been twenty years since he last saw his Enjolras—there was a good chance this man just happened to look like what Valjean imagined Enjolras would look like at this age. “That was before they murdered everyone he loved!” the old man shouted, about to turn away before Alexandre spoke yet again.

“He always smelled like cinnamon when he hugged me!” Alexandre tried, vividly remembering how he had tightly hugged the old man in his dreams, inhaling the scent of cinnamon on his clothes.

Valjean scoffed, unconvinced. “It’s a common enough scent—”

“But his, it came from Sicily,” Alexandre continued, his confidence increasing as he stepped closer to Valjean. “It was made especially for him in a box of polished olive wood.” He recalled how he had spilled a bottle of the cinnamon on a carpet and how the scent never left, and he had liked to lie on the carpet and breathe in the scent whenever his Grandpère was away. He had just sat down on the stool when Valjean snapped again.

“How dare you sit without my permission?” Alexandre shot back up to his feet, stiff as a board, not daring to say anything else until Valjean sighed in defeat and said, “All right, sit. You have my permission.”

As Alexandre sat back down, Valjean approached him, saying begrudgingly, “In that case, I shall sit too.”

Alexandre didn’t dare say another word for fear of angering this old man further, letting silence fall between them until the old man asked sharply, “Who was my favourite assistant?”

“You didn’t have one,” Alexandre responded instantaneously. “You kept dismissing them.”

“That was a trick question,” Valjean snapped, turning to examine this young golden-haired man who was so determined to convince him that he really was his beloved grandson. “You’re clever, I’ll give you that.” He looked Alexandre up and down, stating, “I’m trying to see the resemblance.” The young man had the same golden curls and bright blue eyes, and the same facial structure as his Enjolras did. The resemblance really was remarkable, but the old tsar wasn’t quite willing to believe what his mind kept telling him. “I don’t trust my eyes.”

“You should wear spectacles,” Alexandre blurted out without thinking before immediately realising what he had just said, his hand flying to his mouth. “I’m sorry!”

“Name the three—” Much to Valjean’s shock, the blond-haired lad interrupted him with a question he hadn’t been expecting to hear. A question he had never heard before in previous interviews with various impostors.

“Why don’t you want me to be him?” Alexandre asked, a hint of curiosity in his tone.

Valjean took some time to consider his answer before replying tersely, “I have found solace in my bitterness. It doesn’t disappoint me like you Enjolrases always do.”

“If you give me a chance,” Alexandre told him candidly, a slight quiver in his voice, “maybe I won’t.” Numerous clearer memories were beginning to overwhelm him—the blonde girl that often appeared in his dreams, those same three boys, the stern golden-haired woman in her magnificent tiara and heavy ball gown, and a ball. Always a ball. Why was it always a ball?

 _Mama!_ he heard the blonde girl shout, running up to the woman and embracing her. Mama?

Valjean turned back to Alexandre, his steely stare fixating on the young man. Bitterness dripping from his tone, the old man muttered, “I don’t believe Enjolras exists.”

A look of realisation dawned on Alexandre’s face as he realised why Valjean was so hell bent on clinging to his denial—he didn’t want to get hurt even more. He tried to blink back the tears that were beginning to sting his eyes as he murmured, “You don’t want to believe it.”

“Name your mother’s full title as Empress of All Russia,” Valjean commanded, completely unmoved by Alexandre’s sudden display of emotion. When the young man merely mumbled incoherently in reply, Valjean began loudly, “Her Imperial Majesty, Empress of All the Russias—”

“She was Mama to me!” Memories of her began to come back to Alexandre, recalling how he and his brothers and sister had adored her despite how strict she could be at times. He remembered her stern looks whenever he misbehaved, and much to his own chagrin, felt a single tear run down his cheek at the memories that came rushing back, and he buried his face in his hands. “She was Mama to all of us!”

Valjean drew back, narrowing his eyes as he stared incredulously at the crying young man, completely untouched as he remarked coldly, “You all cry at some point. Did you rehearse? Tears will get you nowhere, young man.”

Why had Valjean come to the hotel if he was so set on denying the fact that Alexandre seemed to be Prince Enjolras? “Why did you come here?” Alexandre asked, wiping away his tears with the sleeve of his shirt.

Valjean remembered what Éponine had said and scoffed, telling Alexandre, “That girl of yours told me you weren’t part of her scheme.”

“She’s right! I wasn’t,” Alexandre replied quickly, his voice still rather shaky. “I only wanted to get to Paris and find out who I am!”

“She thinks you may very well be my grandson,” Valjean continued disdainfully, letting out a cold, mocking laugh as he turned to face Alexandre. He closely examined Alexandre’s looks, thinking that he really did look like his dear Enjolras, based off the photographs enclosed in the letters that he had sent prior to 1917, before all their lives were destroyed. “She thinks you’ve come to believe it yourself.”

“I do, I really do,” Alexandre told the old man, trying not to let the desperation in his voice show. He needed to find out who he was, he _had_ to. His dreams had told him to come to Paris, and now here he was. He was sure that those dreams had been a clue. “I believe it with all of my heart, Your Majesty, but I can’t be him unless you recognise me!”

Valjean drew back, giving him a cold, stony look as he told the young man derisively, “You can’t _be_ anyone unless you first recognise yourself!”

Taken aback, Alexandre looked back down into his lap and let another single tear fall as he murmured, “I know.”

Valjean turned away yet again, staring off into space with a hard look on his face. He remembered everything about his beloved grandchildren—how the brothers had worshipped their sister, how they had adored their parents, their innocence and naïveté when it came to the outside world… Enjolras’ smile was still there, permanently etched into the back of his mind. “Do you know what it means, young man, to lose everything? My son, his children, _everything_ I loved and held dear with all of my heart, I lost to God in one dreadful moment, and for what? ‘The good of Russia’?”

Alexandre looked up, a look of shock registering on his face at the old man’s words. Having become rather tearful in the middle of his bitter statement, Valjean composed himself once more and said tonelessly, “I’ll ask you one last time, young man. Be _very_ careful what you answer.” He fixed Alexandre with a stony glare and asked slowly, “Who _are_ you?”

Rather overwhelmed, Alexandre went silent before managing to choke out, “I don’t know anymore.” He paused, taking a deep breath to compose himself. “Who are _you_?”

Valjean looked away yet again, staring up at the ceiling as he finally let some emotion show, responding, “An old man who remembers everything. I am unreliable. I am… a historian of the heart.” He remembered how he had broken down in tears when the letter stating that the imperial family had been executed arrived, remembering how Jehan had been crying with him. The young count had been closely acquainted with the princes and princess, and he had been terribly upset at the news of their deaths, but he hadn’t been as destroyed as Valjean felt. The old man pressed a hand to his heart, bursting out, “I just want this terrible journey to be over!”

Alexandre stood up all of a sudden, remembering something. “Do you remember the last time you saw Enjolras?” He knelt down before the old man, a nervous yet determined look in his bright blue eyes as the old tsar turned to him.

“I did not know it was the last time,” the old man replied quietly, bitterness evident in his tone. “We never do. We never know which goodbye… is the last.” His voice cracked at the last word, and Alexandre got to his feet once more, remembering something else, a look of realisation dawning on his face.

“You were leaving for Paris!” Alexandre cried, staring down at the old man. He remembered the old man’s words, remembering how he had desperately wanted his Grandpère to stay. “You never came back!” He clearly recalled how he had been given a music box. “You gave him a music box.” Alexandre turned around and noticed his bag lying on the ground where had left it, and he quickly made his way back to the edge of the room to take out the music box as Valjean stood up behind him, unable to believe his ears. Alexandre soon came back with the music box in his hand, growing more apprehensive with each step he took. When the old man turned to look at him, Alexandre held up the music box, saying shakily, “I believe this was it.”

He walked back to stand by the old man and found the mechanism at the bottom of the box, winding it up, opening it to fill the room with the sound of the haunting music. Valjean let out an inaudible gasp, reaching for the music box with trembling hands as Alexandre began to sing softly to the music. “On the wind, ’cross the sea, hear this song and remember…”

Already on the verge of tears, Valjean continued for Alexandre, “Soon you’ll be home with me…” He turned to look at the young man with tears in his eyes, placing his hands over the young man’s and cupping the music box.

“Once upon a December,” the two of them finished in unison, looks of realisation slowly dawning on their faces once they both realised that Alexandre really was the lost prince.

“I said I’d come visit you in Paris,” Alexandre told Valjean, blinking back tears at the realisation that this was the old man who constantly visited him in his dreams and told him to come to Paris, and the young man smiled. “We’d go to the ballet together and walk on the Pont Alexandre III!” _Your bridge, Alexandre,_ he heard Éponine’s voice quipping in the back of his mind. He quickly pushed that thought out of his mind, finding himself unable to think about her without feeling an odd pang in his heart for some unexplainable reason. He took the old man’s hands in his, tears filling his eyes as he told Valjean, “We’ll walk the bridge for all of the family, Grandpère.”

“What took you so long?” Valjean asked, tears now freely streaming down the old man’s cheeks as he gazed at this young man who really had turned out to be his beloved grandson, hardly able to believe that he was here, oh, he was _here_ , he was finally here and he was _alive_.

“It doesn’t matter,” Alexandre replied, biting his lip and smiling at his grandfather. “I’m here with you now.”

“It’s too late,” Valjean told him, his voice shaking. All of the previous men claiming to be his dear grandson who had turned out to be impostors had drained him of all the hope he had initially had, and inexplicably, part of him didn’t want to believe that Alexandre was the one who really was his grandson. “You’ve come too late!”

“It’s never too late to come home, Grandpère,” Alexandre replied softly, his blue eyes shining with tears.

Valjean’s hands reached to cup Alexandre’s jaw, rubbing his grandson’s cheeks with his thumbs and observing how the little boy he had last seen twenty years ago had grown into this handsome young man, and the old man whispered, “Enjolras.”

The old man pulled his grandson into a hug, and that was when Alexandre really felt the tears begin to fall, reunited at last with his dear grandfather, the man he had seen so often in his dreams. As Valjean held on to Alexandre as if he never wanted to let go for fear of this simply being a dream, Alexandre inhaled the old man’s scent and began to tear up even more at that familiar, comforting smell.

_Cinnamon._


	10. Chapter IX - In the End, I Want to Be Standing at the Beginning with You

“Where has he been living?” a reporter called out as a photographer snapped a picture.

“Did he send a letter?” another shouted, waving his notepad in the air. “What kind of letter was it?”

“Excuse me, over here!” yet another yelled, desperately trying to get the attention of the young ginger-haired count and attempting to wave him over.

Jehan and Grantaire were at a press conference at the old tsar’s grand home, absolutely swarmed with reporters who had heard that the rumours of Prince Enjolras didn’t quite seem to be rumours anymore, and the two of them were being bombarded left and right with endless questions about the tsarevich. Jehan’s head was spinning—he wasn’t used to being the centre of attention, and the only thing keeping him from completely losing his head was Grantaire’s presence. The two of them had to stay silent about their little romance, though—they were well aware of the people’s backwards attitudes towards fellows like them. Even still, that didn’t keep Grantaire from never leaving Jehan’s side as they made their way through the throngs of reporters.

“Is it true you’ve had impostors?” one of the reporters nearby questioned, shoving her way through a pack of other reporters.

“What proof do you intend?” another asked, trying to shout over the deafening noise.

As the reporters peppered Jehan and Grantaire with more and more questions, they finally managed to subdue the press long enough to introduce themselves. “Good afternoon! I am Count Jehan Prouvaire,” Jehan introduced himself cheerfully, waving his hands to silence the reporters as he and Grantaire took a seat, prompting the press to do the same. He gestured towards Grantaire, announcing, “And this is Count Raoul Grantaire.” When the reporters collectively leaned forward in their seats, awaiting the young count’s next words, Jehan told them “The old tsar will be arriving soon. I’m sure His Majesty will set the record straight. Now, I’m really not at liberty to gossip at a press conference, so until he arrives, you will just have to guess!”

“Suffice to say, you’ll meet the lost prince,” Grantaire promised, scooting over ever so slightly to be nearer to Jehan and wishing he could take his lover’s hand. The reporters all began to speak again at the brunet’s comment, filling the room with even more noise than before, and soon they were beginning to shout out questions once more.

“Did he arrive by train?”

“I heard he may have gone out of his mind!”

“That is a lie!” Jehan refuted automatically.

“Would you like an exclusive interview from the Paris news?”

“Oh, wow,” Grantaire whistled, turning and raising his eyebrow at Jehan, who gave a tiny shake of the head.

“Is he a fake or is he real?”

“What does he look like?”

“Where has he been? What has he done?”

“Where did he live? _How_ did he live? Who took him in?”

“We’re almost ready to start!” Jehan called out, unsuccessfully attempting to silence the press, who only continued to talk even louder. Huffing, he raised his voice to shout, “His Majesty is old! He will not deal with dimwits! However, he _is_ willing to receive you, but only if you obey the rules! No smoking, no joking, no impertinent commentary… This way!”

Jehan ushered the press through a door into a larger, much more comfortable room, waving for all of them to go into the next room so he could finally clear his head. Once they were all out and he was left alone once again with Grantaire, he turned to his lover and sighed loudly. “I can’t deal with all this attention,” he complained as the other man approached him.

“Then why are you the old tsar’s assistant in the first place?” Grantaire quipped, wiggling his eyebrows at the ginger as he came face to face with him. Jehan rolled his eyes and smiled, his blue eyes quickly darting around to check if they were completely alone before pulling Grantaire into a kiss.

* * *

Alexandre, dressed in formal white military-style attire befitting of a prince, just like the clothes he so often found himself wearing in his dreams, stood with his grandfather for a photograph in an empty room of the large house, his heart pounding in his chest. Why did he feel so anxious? He knew for sure that he was the prince now, and yet, he didn’t feel quite right about his future as royalty. After the last photograph was taken, Valjean turned to face Alexandre, a delighted smile on his face as he took his grandson’s hands in his.

“The press and fellow Russians are all going to want to take a look at you and ask some questions,” Valjean told Alexandre just as Count Theodule entered the room from behind them.

Alexandre gave his grandfather a smile, replying, “All that matters is that we found each other, Grandpère.”

“Surely, Your Majesty, you don’t think this—this _impostor_ is the Tsarevich Enjolras?” Count Theodule interrupted, looking Alexandre up and down in disdain and trying to look for any differences between his appearance and the prince’s appearance as the young golden-haired man recognised him.

“Count Theodule!” Alexandre took steps towards the old count, recounting, “Dark hair, powdered face… and vodka breath!” A brief memory of what his parents had said about the count, laughing heartily between themselves, flashed through his mind, and Alexandre remarked mostly to himself, “No wonder my parents laughed at you behind your back.”

Valjean stifled a smile, confirming, “You’re right, Enjolras, they did.”

Mortified, Count Theodule turned on his heel and exited the room, cheeks burning as Alexandre laughed behind him. Valjean approached his grandson and took his hands yet again, asking candidly, “Now, where’s that young lady of yours?”

Taken aback by his grandfather’s choice of words, Alexandre felt his cheeks flush red as he tried his best to be firm, replying rather tonelessly, “She’s not my young lady.”

Valjean could beg to differ, thinking of how he had offered her the money as a reward for Enjolras’ safe return. Instead of accepting, she had just run out, a resigned, heartbroken look in her eyes at the mere mention of Alexandre. “If it’s not plain to you that she loves you—” Before Valjean could finish, Alexandre had pulled his hands away and turned around, walking away from the old tsar to stand in front of a window, staring out at the city.

“She’s not my young lady, Grandpère,” Alexandre reiterated, trying not to let the slight quiver in his voice be heard, although he couldn’t help but think about what his grandfather had said, his mind wandering back to thoughts of Éponine. Once again, he felt that peculiar pang in his heart at the mere thought of her, although he still didn’t know why.

Valjean stepped up to stand beside Alexandre at the window, telling him matter-of-factly, “When she refused my reward for finding you, I thought to myself, ‘Enjolras has found himself another kind of princess—one of character, not birth.’” At this revelation, Alexandre turned around, his blue eyes widening at what the old tsar was saying. After all those months and all that talk about the money, Éponine never took it?

“Éponine refused the reward?” Alexandre asked, unable to keep the shock out of his voice and blinking in surprise at what he was hearing. He remembered all her grand talk about what she would do with the money when she received it at last, how it had been the main thing keeping her going, and after all that…

“You are Enjolras,” Valjean replied simply, turning to Alexandre and taking his hands once again. “She said _that_ was her reward.” He gazed lovingly at his beloved grandson, telling him serenely, “You have made this the happiest day of my life, Enjolras. Make sure it will be yours as well… Alexandre. We will always have each other no matter what you decide.” The old tsar pressed a kiss to his grandson’s forehead before leaving him alone in the room with his thoughts.

Alexandre looked down at his hands, beginning to walk around in circles as he thought about what Valjean had said. Éponine loved him? His grandfather certainly seemed to think so, and yet… Then again, Éponine had actually refused the reward. That reward had been her main motivation, and if not for that, Alexandre wouldn’t be here in Paris now—the reward she had boasted so much about, the reward she had so desperately wanted, and she had _refused_ it. Why? Why did she do that?

He began to think about his own feelings towards the fiery young brunette, recalling how the simple thought of her voice had made his heart ache back when Valjean first realised that he really was Enjolras. Why had he felt that way? He recalled how he had nearly kissed her that night at the hotel after his horrifying nightmare, after he so vividly remembered encountering her at a parade sixteen years ago, and how she had immediately backed away upon realising he was Enjolras. He didn’t know why he felt so saddened by her backing off. Where was she now, actually? He shouldn’t feel so inexplicably upset about this—the con artist and the prince had both gotten their wish, and the fairytale came true. He hadn’t expected for her to matter this much to him.

 _Oh, my God._ Alexandre’s breath caught in his throat upon realising just how much she had come to mean to him. He had to find her, he had to go after her right now and tell her how he felt.

_I love her._

He had just turned around before he staggered back in shock, seeing Montparnasse in the room with a locked door behind him. “Montparnasse,” Alexandre managed to choke out, that feeling of unease he had felt when he first met the general filling him up again. What was he doing here? Had he stalked him all the way to Paris?

“I’m not going to let you go this time,” Montparnasse told him icily, a threatening undertone to his voice. He approached Alexandre and fixed him with a cold, stony glare, stating, “Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian.”

“We’re both good and loyal Russians,” Alexandre replied coldly, about to back away before he decided to stand his ground, standing straight and tall and facing Montparnasse. If he was going to die, then so be it.

“I’ve come to take you home,” the deputy commissioner told him, beginning to take large steps towards Alexandre.

“My home is here now,” Alexandre said firmly, unable to keep the slight tremor out of his voice despite how much he tried, walking past Montparnasse and just passing him before the shorter man grabbed him by the arm and forced him back.

“Stop playing this game, Alexandre! I beg you!” Montparnasse demanded. Alexandre immediately noticed the slight reluctance in the general’s tone, sensing that he had torn feelings about this whole ordeal.

“We both know this is not a game, Montparnasse,” Alexandre replied, his hand going up to rub the spot where Montparnasse had grabbed him. He knew now that he was Enjolras, and he wasn’t going to let Montparnasse take this away from him.

“If you really are Enjolras,” Montparnasse hissed, his eyes growing colder by the moment, each word drawn out, “do you really think history wants you to have lived?”

“Yes!” Alexandre responded without hesitation, giving the other man one of his steely blue-eyed glares that he had mastered over the months. “Why don’t you?”

“The Valjeans were given everything and gave back nothing,” Montparnasse shouted, beginning to raise his voice, “until the Russian people rose up and _destroyed_ them!”

Stepping closer to the Bolshevik general, towering over him just a bit, Alexandre told him heatedly, “All but one. Finish it. I am my father’s son.”

“And so am I!” Montparnasse had begun to take steps back as Alexandre took steps towards him, his stride confident and fearless and intimidating, a cold glare in his blue eyes. The prince backed away slightly when Montparnasse took out his gun, raising and pointing it at the golden-haired man. “Finish it I must.” With a trembling hand, he raised the gun, yelling, “My father told me not to ask once it was all over! My mother said he died of shame!”

“In me, you see them,” Alexandre shot back defiantly, raising his arms and practically inviting the other man to shoot him dead. “Look at their faces in mine. Hear their screams, imagine their terror, see their blood!”

All of a sudden, he was sixteen again and in that damned cellar, cowering in a corner with his brothers as they blocked their sister from the firing squad in a hopeless attempt to protect her. The blood-splattered walls were punctured by bullets as his father collapsed onto the floor with several bullet holes in his chest, his mother wailing in anguish beside the children. Then the firing squad had pointed their guns at the heir apparent, shooting Combeferre dead with a bullet to the head and several to the chest and stomach; Courfeyrac’s screams when Combeferre, limp as a rag doll, dropped to the floor constantly haunted Alexandre’s nightmares. Tears had been streaming down Cosette’s face as Feuilly and Courfeyrac made a desperate attempt to protect their beloved little sister, backing her into a corner and hiding her so she wouldn’t see how their mother dropped dead to the floor, covered in blood. Alexandre vividly remembered everything now—the gunfire, the blood, and the absolute terror that had consumed him.

“I believe he did what was right!” Montparnasse shouted, his hands shaking uncontrollably as he attempted to cock the gun. “And in my father’s name—”

“Do it!” Alexandre yelled, stepping closer to the point of the gun. “Do it and I will be with my parents and brothers and sister in that cellar in Yekaterinburg all over again!”

“The children—” Montparnasse finally succeeded in cocking the gun after failing several times due to his hands shaking terribly, and he remembered hearing the screams of the boys and their little sister from across the street. “Their voices…” The screams echoed again in the back of his mind, and he squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again, sweat beading his forehead. “A man must make painful choices sometimes, Alexandre, to do what is necessary! I have a duty for Russia; I don’t have a choice! We have a past to bury, Alexandre! For the last time, _who are you_?!” he roared, holding the gun up in Alexandre’s direction.

“I am the Tsarevich Enjolras Valjean!” Alexandre shouted without a hint of hesitation or shame. Montparnasse took huge steps towards him and pointed the gun to the golden-haired man’s neck as he held his head high, blue eyes glaring coldly into Montparnasse’s brown in a silent challenge to pull the trigger. Montparnasse’s hand shook as he placed his hand on the trigger, finding himself unable to pull it despite doing his best to will himself to do so, and his hand dropped as he let out heavy breaths, his chest heaving as the gun hit the floor.

“I can’t,” he muttered, kneeling down onto the floor and hanging his head in shame, picking his gun up to decock it. “I can’t.”

Alexandre uncertainly approached the other man and placed a hand on his shoulder, telling him quietly, “I mean you no harm, Montparnasse.” He had just pulled his hand away and was about to walk away before Montparnasse grabbed his hand, and Alexandre turned back, a startled look in his blue eyes.

“I believe you are Enjolras,” Montparnasse told him, defeated. Alexandre placed his other hand over Montparnasse’s, a vaguely pitying look on his face.

“What will you tell them?” the golden-haired man asked, looking down at the kneeling general before him.

Montparnasse said nothing and merely pulled his hand away, picking up his gun and standing up, staring at it. At last, he shook his head in quiet resignation, stowing his gun away under his suit jacket as he muttered, “That I was not my father’s son after all.” He turned to Alexandre and held his hand out for the prince to shake, and he told the other man quietly, “Long life… comrade.” With that, he walked back to the door and unlocked it before going out of the room, leaving Alexandre alone. Just then, the young man realised he still had something to do and rushed out with a new purpose.

* * *

“He’ll turn up,” Grantaire reassured them confidently, although there was lingering doubt evident in his tone as he continued, “but why would he disappear in the first place?”

He, Jehan, and the old tsar were in the luxurious parlour of the Valjean estate, the press gathered in a room downstairs. Alexandre was nowhere to be found, and Grantaire and Jehan had quickly found that he wasn’t in the estate anymore. They now sat before the fireplace with Valjean, confused beyond belief as to why Alexandre would have just disappeared like that.

“You’ve accepted him as the heir to the Valjean fortune,” Jehan chimed in, his brow furrowing. Where was Alexandre?

“He’ll live like a king!” Grantaire added, adding as an afterthought, “Even though the people don’t want kings anymore.”

Valjean gave the dark-haired man a sharp look, reprimanding sternly, “Watch your mouth, young man.”

Grantaire immediately backtracked, seeming to shrink into himself as he mumbled in reply, “Yes, Your Majesty.” He then ran out of the parlour up to the room Alexandre had been sleeping in up until last night, finding nothing but a bare room with a neatly made bed, with a music box and what seemed to be a note sitting smack-dab in the middle of the silk sheets. His green eyes widening, he grabbed the music box and the note and rushed back to the parlour, saying, “Not a trace of him, Your Majesty. The room was empty except for these.” He held up the letter and music box to the old tsar, and Valjean immediately took the two items out of Grantaire’s hands, placing the music box on the empty space on the sofa beside him and beginning to read the note, which was written in thin, slanted handwriting.

_Dearest Grandpère, wish me luck! I hope we’ll be together in Paris again soon, but I can’t be sure. Nevertheless, I wish you all the best, and I hope the rest of your life will be kind to you as I hope mine will be to me. À bientôt! Love, your Enjolras._

Valjean found tears welling up in his eyes at the note and caught himself smiling at the note as he took the music box, gazing at it and remembering how he had given it to his dear grandson years and years ago. “I think we’ve seen the last of that young man, Jehan,” he told the young count, gazing into the fire and watching the sparks fly.

A bewildered look crossed Jehan’s face as he stepped closer to Valjean, asking in confusion, “Was he really Enjolras?”

Valjean merely smiled serenely, remembering the words he had spoken to him twenty years ago. Oh, how the years have passed. “My favourite,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “Strong and not afraid of anything.”

Grantaire and Jehan exchanged looks, trying to figure out what the old man was going on about as Grantaire said uncharacteristically timidly, “It’s time, Your Imperial Majesty. We can’t hold them for much longer.”

Valjean nodded in understanding, getting up to put the music box and note on top of a nearby writing desk before letting Jehan and Grantaire lead him downstairs, where the press were waiting. The reporters all immediately began to shout and snap pictures at the sight of the old tsar descending the stairs, and he managed to silence all of them with a simple wave of his hand.

“All I can tell you is that as of today, there will be no more Enjolrases,” Valjean told the nosy reporters, keeping himself from chuckling quietly at the various noises of disappointment they made. “The reward for his safe return will be given to charity. There never was an Enjolras after all. He was a dream—oh, he was nothing but a beautiful dream, so no more talk of the Tsarevich Enjolras Valjean.” The old tsar watched as the reporters furiously scribbled notes on their notepads, feeling one single tear of happiness slip down his cheek.

_My favourite. Strong and not afraid of anything._

* * *

Éponine stood alone at the Pont Alexandre III, holding her suitcase in her hands. She was dressed in her ratty old clothes once again—her dirty oversized trench coat, her treasured newsboy cap, and her worn-out work boots. She gazed at the bridge and sighed, wondering where Alexandre was now. He was Prince Enjolras, and she had to let him go no matter how much it broke her heart to do so. As she began to slowly tread down one side of the bridge, she gazed out at the lights bouncing off the glittering water, twilight falling upon the city. She had no idea where she was going to go now that Alexandre was reunited with his grandfather and Grantaire was back to being a part of the court. _I’ll have to find someplace to go, won’t I?_

Her feet dragged along as she gazed out at the river and at the Eiffel Tower in the distance, the lampposts illuminating her way as twilight rapidly fell upon the city. She was lost in thought, plagued by thoughts of Alexandre and wondering what he was up to now. _Probably feasting on caviar and champagne,_ she thought to herself, resigned. _Being introduced to pretty ladies who are actually worthy of him._

She loved him, and admitting to herself that she loved him only made it hurt even more since they could never be together. She didn’t even know if he returned her feelings in the first place! She should just leave the city and forget that whatever had been going on between her and Alexandre ever happened. She had actually refused the reward from old Valjean, after all those months of fantasising about what she was going to do with the money when she finally received it. Thinking about it now, she was surprised to find that she didn’t regret refusing the reward. She had brought Alexandre—Enjolras—back to his grandfather. She had been the one who knew all along that he was the prince. That alone was reward enough.

Éponine stopped at the middle of the bridge, gazing out at the sparkling water as the sky turned all shades of pink and purple and blue. She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn’t hear a familiar voice shouting her name until she looked up, and her dark eyes widened upon catching sight of Alexandre standing several feet away from her, looking just like the prince he was. He had his old coat on so as to blend in with the people, but Éponine could see a bit of the white military-style suit he was wearing underneath. What the hell was he doing here? She tried to be snarky and indifferent, saying, “If you ever see me from a carriage again, don’t wave, don’t _smile_ —” She turned back to the river, gazing at the light reflecting off the water as she lowered her voice, telling him quietly, “I don’t want to be in love with someone I can’t have for the rest of my life.” She placed her suitcase on the pavement and curtsied to Alexandre, trying to will away the tears that were threatening to fill her eyes. “Goodbye, Your Highness.”

Éponine was just beginning to walk away when Alexandre spoke, stopping her in her tracks.

“This seems rather silly,” he started, taking a step towards her and chuckling to himself at the memory of how he had confided in his sister about his most secret, strongest desires, “but when I was a boy, I was quite close to my sister. I liked to confide in her about how I had always dreamed my first kiss would be in Paris with a beautiful princess.”

Éponine turned around, putting her suitcase down on the ground yet again. What was he going on about? “I—I’m not your princess, Alexandre.”

Alexandre briskly approached her, stating candidly, “Prince Enjolras Valjean would beg to disagree… ’Ponine.”

Éponine felt as if she had stopped breathing when they finally came face to face, and the next thing she knew, Alexandre had taken her face into his hands and he was leaning down and then his lips were pressed to hers and he was kissing her like his life depended on it. Her dark eyes widened as she stood there in shock before she closed her eyes and threw her arms around his neck, melting into him and kissing him back with much enthusiasm. She stood on tiptoe so he could properly kiss her, and oh, the feeling of his lips on hers was almost too much and she felt like the butterflies in her stomach had multiplied tenfold as he kissed her passionately on that bridge, saying everything that couldn’t be said in words in one single, simple kiss. Éponine pressed herself against him as if she was fearful that he would just disappear, that this was just a dream, and when he pulled away, her eyes were still closed for a few moments before she opened them to find him smiling at her, his blue eyes sparkling and the soft yellow light of the streetlamps bouncing off his golden curls. She smiled back at him, absolutely elated to find that this wasn’t just a dream after all, and a squeal of delight escaped her lips when he lifted her up and twirled her around, utter joy and delight evident in that dazzling smile of his. Once she was back on the ground, she stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, sighing happily against his lips and sliding her hand up into his hair, running her fingers through his golden curls. When she pulled away, her lips were curved into a dreamy little smile, and she gazed tenderly up at him, gazing into those bright blue eyes of his.

“What’s going to happen now?” Éponine asked softly, wondering how Alexandre had been able to come to her in the first place.

He took her hand in his and brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles just like he had all those months ago during his lessons as he replied quietly, “I don’t know.”

He pressed one more kiss to her lips, finding that he couldn’t get enough of her now that he knew just how much he had fallen for her, and he then offered her his arm, which she took. The two of them began to walk arm in arm down the bridge, uncertain as to what the future would bring. Alexandre felt an odd pang in his heart as he thought of his family, how he had been the sole survivor, and Éponine looked up and noticed the melancholy look on his face, beginning to grow concerned.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly as they stopped in their tracks.

Alexandre nodded before he stopped, and then he nodded again, much more sure this time. “Yes, I am.”

He knew he had to live an incognito life as Alexandre from now on since the Bolsheviks wouldn’t take too kindly to a prince’s survival, and although everything in his future seemed blurry and indefinite, he had a feeling Éponine would be the one constant in his life. Looking at her now, he remembered how he had first met her a year ago and marvelled at just how much things have changed since then. He wondered if he was ever going to see his Grandpère again, and Grantaire and Jehan. He could never be too sure, but he hoped he would.

Éponine took her arm away and simply took Alexandre’s hand, lacing her fingers through his, and she gave his hand a reassuring squeeze as she gazed up at him. “So it’s you and me?”

Alexandre looked back at her, his blue eyes shining as he nodded. “You and me.”

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

Éponine smiled up at him, tender and loving and just glad that he was there with her, and he smiled back at her before the two of them continued to walk down the side of the bridge, crossing from one bank to another and into a new life.

Alexandre had the feeling that somewhere, his parents, sister, and brothers were all smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and so this tale comes to a close. however, with every ending comes a beginning, and i have a total of six (6) e/é au's that i'm currently writing, including one based on an animated disney favourite of mine
> 
> so what did you think of this au??? do let me know!! i live for positive feedback and i thirst for positive feedback almost as much as i thirst for aaron tveit. comments/kudos are really appreciated!!! pls
> 
> hmu on tumblr @bisexual-eponine for more e/é action!!


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